Rites and Fantasies
ZILBOORC, GREGORY
Rites and Fantasies Symbolic Wounds. Reviewed by Gregory Zilboorg By Bruno Bettelheim. Well-known, psychiatrist; author, Free Press. 286 pp. $5.00. "Sigmund Freud" and other books On page 73 of...
...Too many authorities are quoted here almost indiscriminately (including some writings of this reviewer...
...On the contrary, he says in a footnote to the lines quoted above: "This book may not be entirely free of similar errors...
...Bettelheim is a well-read man, and is apparently a person of considerable intellectual power and idealism...
...What makes the truth of it even more poignant is the fact that Freud made this differentiation between the fantasies which retrospectively appear to the patient as true events, and the real "historical" events of the patient's life...
...Even before these letters were published, Freud called our attention to this aspect of psychoanalysis in his History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, and also in his autobiographical sketch...
...Bettelheim will write other books, and I am sure that he will free himself of the errors of technique which cloud the essential worth of the present volume...
...It would thus be unjust to point out the author's errors, for they might prove to be errors to which Mr...
...The specialist will already know a great deal about the subject of the book, while the general reader will be confused by the numerous technical terms, like "Id drives" and "Ego drives," which have little meaning for him...
...Not that Mr...
...Bettelheim is on the verge of drifting into some sort of gynecocentric theory, and yet he fails even to mention its true author, Lester F. Ward...
...but, beyond certain purely empirical (and therefore quite valuable) illustrations, Mr...
...I believe that, in interpreting puberty rites and circumcision also, we have failed to separate fantasies of patients from historical reality...
...Bettelheim's reference to the difference between fantasy and reality is a correct one, but it would have been more edifying for the reader if the author had pointed out that his emphasis on this point came directly from Freud...
...Bettelheim has done an excellent job of putting things together, but one cannot help regretting that his scholarship and talent were put in the service of a kind of psychoanalytic concordance rather than a true analysis...
...This is probably true, more or less...
...Bettelheim lacks modesty and discretion...
...This essential difference was borne in upon him before he published his Interpretation of Dreams, i.e., before 1900, and he speaks of it in his letters to Wilhelm Fliess...
...It seems fairly obvious that Mr...
...The author finally arrives at the conclusion that a man might more often wish to be a woman than a woman might wish to be a man...
...The above remarks were not written in a spirit of carping criticism...
...This statement is quite true...
...Bettelheim pleads guilty in advance, or, more unpleasant yet, they might prove only fantasies of the reviewer or of the many authorities quoted...
...This book deserves commendation for providing a more or less eclectic compilation of psychological and not-so-psychological, sociological and not-so-sociological, anthropological and not-so-anthropological speculations on the subject of castration anxiety, puberty rites, etc...
...they reluctantly call attention to certain errors in a book by a very good man...
...Bettelheim does not offer sufficient evidential material to prove the point...
...Sigmund Freud" and other books On page 73 of this book, Bruno Bettelheim states: " the reader may gain the impression that the child's reactions to his parent present a true picture of the parent or of his intentions...
Vol. 37 • June 1954 • No. 24
