The Last of Her Kind Remains a Mystery : * * * * BARBRA STREISAND “Just for the Record . . .” <i> Columbia</i>

What hath psychologist John Bradshaw wrought? His best-selling “inner child” reclamation theories reach their inevitable apotheosis on Barbra Streisand’s version of “You’ll Never Know” at the end of her massive new four-volume career retrospective.

On this old standard, the Barbra who is now in her late 40s duets with 13-year-old Barbra, courtesy of a scratchy acetate and modern technology. (The spooky effect is a la Nat and Natalie Cole, only through the looking glass instead of beyond the grave.)

Hearing the adult lovingly croon “you’ll never know how much I miss you” to the child (and reading her liner notes about “coming to terms with ourselves by accepting . . . the child who still lives inside us”) won’t make Streisand any less of an easy target for detractors who make an ongoing point of trying to prick her celebrated ego.

Yet finally the “duet” doesn’t seem quite so narcissistic as all that, perhaps because the listener, too, after taking in these 4 1/2 hours of material, can join Streisand in missing her younger, more defined self--along with the bygone musical era that produced her as the last of a breed.

And one reason America’s favorite “funny girl” of yore seems so missable is that--illusion or not--she seemed knowable then, much more so than the powerful and publicly polite but slightly removed figure we see and hear so infrequently today.

At times as much an audio documentary of her professional life as a musical collection, “Just for the Record . . .” offers the fan many “personal” moments, if few truly revealing ones.

With her chart successes already well-documented on a series of greatest-hits albums over the years, this superbly designed box set admirably stresses unreleased material to the point that the recognizable versions of her standards easily take a back seat to the curios. Guest appearances on TV shows and awards show speeches are interspersed with live and studio recordings that never made it out of the vault, most of them more than worthy of the light of day.

But as the set progresses chronologically from the early ‘60s to the late ‘80s, Streisand herself slips more out of focus--not so much a fault of the collection itself as a reflection of the fact that she’s had trouble relating to and finding a place in the encroaching rock era.

Maybe that’s why the adult Barbra remains such a mystery.

As a singer of show tunes, Streisand is consummate, the major influence of her own generation and all the green theater majors that have succeeded her.

The first two volumes here--both devoted to her ‘60s work--are a delight, full of transition and growth even as Streisand stuck with what was clearly her element. The brassy musical comedian who made her mark as the show-stopping supporting player “Miss Marmelstein” (in the 1962 Broadway production “I Can Get It for You Wholesale”) can be heard developing into the more sensitive and controlled balladic interpreter who wraps up the decade with “On a Clear Day (You Can See Forever).”

The transition between zaniness and sobriety was exemplified almost literally in the lyrics of “Funny Girl,” in which, as Fanny Brice--still her defining role as a star--Streisand acknowledges being good for a laugh but wants to be loved as a woman. She had versatility but, thanks to theater and the movies, she had even more of a persona.

Unfortunately, Streisand’s peak coincided with the end of the era of film musicals. Since the trio she made in the late ‘60s (“Funny Girl,” “Hello Dolly,” “On a Clear Day”), she has starred in only three more (“Funny Lady,” the abominable “A Star Is Born” and “Yentl”).

On the pop side in the ‘70s and ‘80s, she groped often and with some difficulty for direction--though you wouldn’t necessarily know it from this collection, which wisely skips over the missteps.

Among this massive undertaking, which includes more than 80 songs (counting medleys) on its four cassettes or CDs, a whopping total of two numbers are in a contemporary pop-rock mode: Laura Nyro’s “Stoney End,” her 1970 break from show-biz convention to attempt a rollicking Carole King style, and “Guilty,” her 1980 duet with Bee Gee Barry Gibb.

Representative? Hardly. Streisand recorded album after album of light rock-oriented material, even venturing into disco with a hit duet with Donna Summer, little of which is to be found--or, frankly, terribly missed--here.

At the time of releasing her smash throwback “The Broadway Album” in ‘85, Streisand finally confessed her utter disdain for rock, which, while certainly narrow to the extreme, was at least a welcome concession she’d realized her manner of interpretation wasn’t cut out for its very different demands.

But the exclusion of Streisand’s many flirtations with passing mainstream pop styles means that the third and fourth volumes here--representing the ‘70s and ‘80s, respectively--are heavily laden with Barbra doing what Barbra now does best: ballads, most perfectly exemplified by the 1979 zenith, “Evergreen.”

It’s hard to find fault with too many of the individual selections (even if, unlike Streisand, you don’t necessarily believe that Alan and Marilyn Bergman are the pre-eminent lyricists of our time). But digesting all this mounting easy-listening en masse isn’t so easy on a listener as the box’s earlier, more theatrical stretches.

Still, the tantalizing outtakes set down for the first time here stretch across all four volumes: Pre-stardom TV appearances with Johnny Carson, Garry Moore and Mike Wallace, all presciently commending what the world would soon know . . . on Judy Garland’s variety show, a long, Sweeney Sisters-like medley with the host . . . an early nightclub medley that enjoyably segues for no apparent reason from “Cry Me a River” to “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” . . . a long-buried, nicely done companion piece to “The Way We Were,” titled “The Way We Weren’t” . . . and Frank Loesser’s “Warm All Over,” a preview of a future Streisand show-tunes project, an apparent sequel to her “Broadway Album.”

Just as easy to compile is a list of documentary moments the true faithful might cherish but the casual fan could do without: Lengthy excerpts from a 1969 Friars Club tribute (including Don Rickles affectionately telling Streisand’s mother, “Your daughter is a dummy”) . . . inconsequential dialogue from “A Star Is Born” . . . her memorable first Oscar acceptance speech (“Hello, gorgeous”) followed by less memorable thank-yous at the Emmys and Grammys . . . a clumsy duet with Burt Bacharach of “Close to You” . . . and a benign yet bizarre long-distance chat about maternal instincts with then-Prime Minister Golda Meir, from the ’79 special “A Salute to Israel at 30.”

The portrait of Streisand that emerges from all this is of someone who wants to be liked and someone who wants to remain a little vague. A workhorse in her early years, the diva wields her clout more slowly and carefully now, appearing live almost never and only for charity (the 1986 “One Voice,” to help finance half a dozen threatened liberal Democrats), turning out films at the recent rate of two per decade, and making fewer and fewer records.

This may be less a function of laziness than the fact that dream projects are burdensome to get under way, even for such a Hollywood heavyweight.

Other than the liner-note applause for a liberal Congress and some asides about how her feminism inspired her to film “Yentl” and “Up the Sandbox,” and a few old nuzzling-Jon Peters booklet snapshots, though, there are few peeks behind the curtain, little sense amid the striking, legendary technique of what drives her.

Which is no doubt as she wants it. Since shedding the “funny lady” persona to be just a lady, Streisand has been even more The Voice than a transparent personality.

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four (excellent). A rating of five stars is reserved for classic reissues or retrospectives.