Secret Passages: The Theory and Technique of Interpsychic Relations, by Stefano Bolognini, translated by Gina Atkinson,  Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, London and New York, 2010,  264pp.

The work of Stefano Bolognini, the recently elected President of the International Psychoanalytical Association, is less well known in the North American psychoanalytic community than it should be. If the combination of his previously published papers and books have failed to establish him as a major voice, speaking for the contemporary classical vision of psychoanalysis, Secret Passages should rectify this oversight for anyone who takes the time to give it the careful reading it deserves. In this volume, Bolognini displays a feeling for the clinical application of multiple theories that cannot fail to impress the psychoanalytic reader. In addition, this book has the advantage of an excellent translation by Gina Atkinson who manages to capture the author's personal style of relating to the reader while facilitating an overview of the totality of his contributions to the psychoanalytic literature. Although many of Bolognini's papers have been published in English, the specificity of individual topics he has chosen to write about fail to do justice to his broader position on the spectrum of psychoanalytic thinking. Fortunately, with the publication of Secret Passages it is possible for psychoanalysts in the United States to evaluate his way of thinking about analytic theory and how he utilizes diverse psychoanalytic theories by incorporating individual thinkers who represent different theoretical schools to construct his approach to patients.