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PARTISAN REVIEW
he is well aware of post-Freudian advances, including the multiple
perspectives opened by the English object relations school and the
current study of creative and pathological narcissism undertaken by
Kohut and the practitioners of self-psychology. The contributions of
Melanie Klein are not incorporated into his studies (except for a
brief reference to Bion's work on group dynamics), although he is
aware of them.
Just as the psychoanalyst who works with vastly different pa–
tients has to be equipped with a flexible assortment of therapeutic
tools and conceptual frameworks , so too must the psychohistorian
rely on a full assortment of psychoanalytic perspectives. Without
multiple ways of understanding his subject, the historian will not be
able- tO comprehend historical figures, mass movements, and seem–
ingly irrational phenomena . In offering his readers plausible inter–
pretations, not definitive truths or dogmatic assertions, Loewenberg
remains consistent with modern historiography that is non-reduc–
tionistic and is opposed to one-dimensional causal explanations.
Loewenberg the psychoanalytic historian wrote this volume
with two caps on, straddling two dissimilar universes of discourse,
speaking to two different audiences. This is ultimately a strength
and a weakness . Loewenberg has not, however, found the ideal kind
of language which effectively bridges the two disciplines. That lan–
guage has yet to be invented. Probably it will describe unconscious
activity, impulses, fantasies, deficiencies and conflicts in a manner
comprehensible to a literate audience. When Loewenberg treats an–
alytic questions, his writing sounds like that in professional psycho–
analytic journals, which are not celebrated for their prose. Loewen–
berg's grasp of often elusive psychoanalytic terminology is strong and
subtle, which may please his audience of analysts. But it is bound to
alienate his general readers . He might have risked being more per–
sonal, disclosing his own empathic immersion in his subject material
and methodology in a style adopted by Erikson in
Gandhi's Truth
(1969), without a loss of clarity, scholarly balance and seriousness,
and insight. Perhaps in his subsequent writings, he will be less con–
cerned about following the accepted academic and psychoanalytic
style of discourse, and will be at liberty to find an idiom more appro–
priate to his theme, closer to his own personal voice.
In two of his "Austrian Portraits," the study of Victor and
Friedrich Adler and of Otto Bauer, intellectual history and psycho–
history converge , and the convergence is illuminating. (Loewenberg
