The book begins the “Introduction” section with how Freud’s relationship with Breuer broke up when Freud suggested sexuality. The introduction was made by saying that Freud’s loneliness combined with his genius was crowned with a magnificent drive theory. A detailed summary of the drive theory is given in the input theory. Mitchell has elaborated ideas from classical psychoanalysis, object relations theory, interpersonal psychoanalysis, and self-psychologies in one book. He argued that although these theories have irreconcilable differences between them, they have a common central theme. Psychoanalytic theories operate within a domain defined by many dual concepts: drive or relational; classified as intrapsychic or interpersonal, biological or social, internal or external world, conflict or developmental arrest, and, as an important difference, oedipal or pre-oedipal. Second, the impact of early experience, the relation of the past to the present, the interweaving of illusion and reality, the centrality of the will, the repetition of painful experience, the nature of the analytic situation and the analytic change process. Using Freud’s Newtonian mechanics and Sullivan’s Field Theory, it was emphasized that his theories were physically based.
Freud’s animal and infant nature of man? Or Winnicott’s welcoming environment? Winnicott’s revival proposal? Or is it Freud’s first mature organization, abandoning infantile desires? It is an instructive and inquisitive book in which answers to questions are sought.
