This collection of papers, spanning the last fifteen years, presents a spirited defence of Freud's clinical method, considering the 'crisis of psychoanalysis' in the wider context of a crisis of reflective thought in society as a whole. Expressing the wish to 'clarify and polish the glass through which we see the psychoanalytic experience', Jorge Ahumada seeks to redefine the functions of psychoanalysis for the era of mass media, in which the classic Freudian neuroses have mostly been replaced by what he terms 'pathologies of peremptory gratification'.