Jacques Sedat’s Freud — translated here by Susan Fairfield — is a
brief, chronological and very reliable introduction to the essentials of Freud’s
psychoanalysis. Its chronological architectonic is far from its only
innovation, though. It also gives some — but happily not too much — attention
to the literary genres of Freud’s work (such as case histories, metapsychological
writings and technical advise for analysts) and also aims to reveal the "subjective
and personal factor" in Freud’s impressive body of texts (p.72). The
subjective and personal factor in Freud’s writings is naturally associated with
their origins and most clearly explicated by Sedat with regard to Freud’s
discovery — if discovery it was — of thanatos: the death drive. On
this broad subject, however, it is probably worth mentioning that Sedat’s Freud
— for all its lucidity and careful exposition elsewhere — does not appear
to emphasise clearly enough the point that just because a theory has a
subjective origin does not impugn or discredit (or, indeed, effect in any other
way) its validity.

   
Sedat is the general secretary of the International Society for the History of
Psychoanalysis. Yet despite his obvious comfort with, immersion in and masterly
use of the psychoanalytic vocabulary, Sedat has a surprisingly light and
engaging touch when it comes to lucidly explicating the core of Freud’s
groundbreaking theories concerning human character and motivation. Sedat’s Freud
can therefore be recommended as a fresh and trustworthy introduction for
those new to the study of Freud and — as it sometimes ambitiously attempts to
iron out inconsistencies in Freud’s own writing (see p.50) — can also be
recommended as an interpretation likely to interest those not entirely
unacquainted with Freudian theory.

   
The text under present consideration also wants to underline the idea that the
analyst is not there as himself but is rather there as a placeholder for an
absent but significant other (p.166). He or she substitutes himself for this
other, which Sedat rather strangely — though possibly under the influence of a
Levinasian understanding of ethics — sees as removing psychoanalysis from the
space of ethics, since the true otherness of the other is not acknowledged.
However, it seems to the present reviewer to be at least arguably an ethical
act insofar as it is motivated precisely by the needs of the other (the analysand).

   
The main Freudian texts under consideration in this book’s chronological
explication are more or less the ones which you would expect an introductory
text to cover, allowing, of course, for the fact that every author has his own
perspective on Freud. In his exposition, Sedat looks chiefly at the Studies
on Hysteria, The Interpretation of Dreams, Three essays on the
Theory of Sexuality, On Narcissism, Beyond the Pleasure Principle,
Group Psychology and the analysis of the Ego and The Ego and the Id,
as well as The Question of Lay Analysis. The inclusion of the latter
text in particular demonstrates the extent to which Sedat aims to look at the
clinical encounter from, as it were, both sides of the couch.

  
Two things remain to be mentioned in this review. Firstly, that in this brief
introduction Sedat reads Freud’s work on, as it were, Freud’s own terms, and so
Freud does not, in this book, suffer from a misleading over–association with
the work of, for example, Jacques Lacan. Secondly, and finally, we must mention
that for the most part Jacques Sedat’s Freud eschews explicit polemical
engagement with the vast secondary literature on Freud, thereby remaining
concise and immediate.

© 2006 Matthew Ray

 Matthew Ray, Bristol, UK

Categories: Psychoanalysis