Otto Fenichel – författare

The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis, Fenichel''s classic text, summarized the first half century of psychoanalytic investigation into psychopathology and presented a general psychoanalytic theory of neurosis. When Otto Fenichel died, Anna Freud mourned the loss of ''his inexhaustible knowledge of psychoanalysis and his inimitable way of organizing and presenting his facts''. These qualities shine through The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis which has been a standard reference for generations of psychoanalysts. For this anniversary edition, Leo Rangell has written an introduction that sets Fenichel''s work in context. He sees Fenichel as a worthy heir to Freud; both men influenced their followers by what Rangell calls ''the charisma of ideas''. In his epilogue, Rangell describes the fate of Fenichel''s ideas and of this book as ''a barometer of the place of psychoanalysis ... within the external intellectual world and, even more significantly, of the trends and shifting winds of opinion within the psychoanalytic field itself''. He traces those trends through the turbulent controversies of the field, concluding that Fenichel''s observations are as fresh and relevant today as they were fifty years ago.

The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis, Fenichel''s classic text, summarized the first half century of psychoanalytic investigation into psychopathology and presented a general psychoanalytic theory of neurosis. When Otto Fenichel died, Anna Freud mourned the loss of ''his inexhaustible knowledge of psychoanalysis and his inimitable way of organizing and presenting his facts''. These qualities shine through The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis which has been a standard reference for generations of psychoanalysts. For this anniversary edition, Leo Rangell has written an introduction that sets Fenichel''s work in context. He sees Fenichel as a worthy heir to Freud; both men influenced their followers by what Rangell calls ''the charisma of ideas''. In his epilogue, Rangell describes the fate of Fenichel''s ideas and of this book as ''a barometer of the place of psychoanalysis ... within the external intellectual world and, even more significantly, of the trends and shifting winds of opinion within the psychoanalytic field itself''. He traces those trends through the turbulent controversies of the field, concluding that Fenichel''s observations are as fresh and relevant today as they were fifty years ago.

A comprehensive presentation of the dynamics of neurosis, with valuable clinical material and a discussion of treatment; translated from the German.

The wealth of clinical and theoretical data which psychoanalysis has been gathering for almost forty years as yet awaits an adequate systematization. A number of summaries and more or less complete systematic reviews of the field of psychoanalysis have been attempted and a number of them, of greater or less value, have been published with either the specialist or the general medical or or lay public in mind. Dr. Fenichel’s Outline is not one of these attempts.

It is rather a systematized and almost impersonal presentation of clinical data which psychoanalysis has collected in the course of almost forty years and Dr. Fenichel frankly sacrifices simplified clarity to systematic completeness. The clinician will find it a very useful reference book; the general medical reader or the psychologist will find it to be a plain statement of fact made without prejudice or special preference to any of the variety of currents in present day psychoanalytical thought. It is the first outline of what the psychoanalytical trends are in the field of clinical work, leaving out the controversial attitudes which are always to be found in a living scientific discipline that has not yet become dogmatized.