Any belief system seems opaque to outsiders. Psychoanalysis was a very important step towards understanding and treating psychological problems but we have mostly left it behind, like Aristotelian physics. Without a basic sympathy for psychoanalysis this book becomes a series of unrelated assertions with the odd piercing insight; (the skewering of health bores is very amusing). Relatively low in ideas per page I'd say it is of mainly historical interest now. The awkward expression mentioned in an earlier review is certainly a problem. This shouldn't be in the first five books you read about this subject.