Reason and Violence*

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Abstract
In this book, Laing and Cooper present expositions of Sartre’s three major works of the past decade. There is a lucid introduction, which for most profit should be re-read immediately once one has finished the book: it illuminates the difficult terminology, and particularly discusses the concept of “ambiguity” in Sartre’s work and language for which the reader should prepare himself if he is to attempt understanding. Part One—“Question of Method”—repays careful and attentive reading, as the use of such concepts as praxis, totalization, depassment thereby become more intelligible: if some awareness of them is assimilated, then Part Three—“Critique of dialectical reason”—is best taken at a run, without too much vertiginous dwelling on individual statements. The ideas it is expressing are vastly comprehensive and complex, and can best be appreciated in this way. Part One speaks more directly to the practising psychoanalyst, making one reflect on possible extensions of technique, and on increase in flexibility. 300While the section on Genet presents a fascinating existential study in terms which are reasonably accessible to a clinician, the Questions of Method offer stimulating lines of thought on the extent to which psychoanalysis compares unconflictingly with Sartre’s thought, and yet how far also Sartre “depasses” it.

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