Brief Notices

BRIEF NOTICES The Third Revolution. By KARL STERN. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954. Pp. 818. $4.00. The argument of this hook-as the author asserts twice (p. 90, 290)is primarily historical. It traces the origin and development of the " Third Revolution." Three revolutions arose out of the nineteenth century: the social, started by Marx, the biological and racist, due to Darwin and the ev9lutionists, and the positivist revolution which began with Comte and has become widespread through the ideas of the scientific positivists. The aim of this Comtean revolution is to replace revelation, faith and philosophy by science, and science in this case means first the science of man, that is, psychology and sociology. Positivistic psychology develops the mechanistic concept of l'homme machine-which, it be said in passing, derives from La Mettrie and not from Descartes, as the author asserts. Stern feels that psychoanalysis now forms, to a startling degree, part of the positivist revolution. By psychoanalysis the author understands the Freudian type which consists of a psychological structure, the therapeutic method, and a philosophical or superstructure. The author believes-contrary to several other Catholic authors-that the superstructure is not an essential part of the Freudian system; hence, that it can be removed so as to make the system philosophically neutral. In order to prove this statement the author in the first place uses a kind of pragmatic argument by pointing out that a number of psychiatrists, with a Christian set of beliefs, actually use psychoanalytical methods to great advantage. But his chief piece of evidence is that the main tenets of psychoanalysis not only are opposed to scientific positivism, but fit in perfectly with a Christian idea of the nature of man. If it were essentially materialistic and atheistic, it certainly would have been embraced by the communists, but psychoanalysis is banned in the Soviet Union. This is one of Stern's favorite arguments developed previously in an article published in the " Bulletin of the Guild of Catholic Psychiatrists" (December, 1952)-which provided a kind of preview for the present book. Dr. Stern goes even so far as to say that Freud's entire philosophical superstructure was not much more than an academic play. Accordingly, the basic concepts of psychoanalysis-the dynamic unconscious , libido, sublimation and transference-can all be stripped of the materialistic or mechanistic connotation which Freud and other analysts have given them. For instance, no one really accepts Freud's crudely mechanistic theory concerning sublimation, as if the " quantum " of libidinal 429 430 BRIEF NOTICES energy were shunted back and forth in different channels. Stern particularly stresses the concept of transference as altogether alien to materialistic or positivistic interpretations. For transference means the relationship of " I and Thou,'' and that is based upon empathy-the function by which one re"feels another person's feelings or re-experiences his experiences, "as if you were he " (p. 19 ff.) . In this relationship there is an interpenetration of being and, therefore, it contains an implicitly metaphysical quality. For that reason the concept of empathy is incompatible with materialism and for the same reason we are able to integrate psychoanalytic teachings into Christian philosophy and theology. In other words, Stern makes an attempt to " baptize " Freud, as others have done before. Has Dr. Stern succeeded in proving that the main features of psychoanalysis can be made philosophically neutral? Many readers will probably be impressed by the author's evidence. However, what Stern gives with one hand, he retracts with the other. In theory, he holds, it is possible to isolate the therapeutic method from the rest of the system and thus make it philosophically neutral, but in practice neutrality is impossible, precisely because the analytical method is based on the mechanism of transference. That unique relationship between patient and therapist never can be really neutral, due to the fact that the moral attitude, the outlook on life, the philosophy of the physician will necessarily enter into it. It works both ways. As an atheistic and an amoralist attitude will permeate the atmosphere of the therapeutic situation, so will the philosophy of the Christian physician. In neither case do they have to formulate in words...