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This volume, the first record of the annual conferences on self psychology compiled after Kohut's death, indicates the continuing power of self psychology to interest readers in the vision of theory and technique of Kohut and those who have worked with or been inspired by him. Readers of this compendium, which is based largely on papers presented at the 6th Annual Self Psychology Conference held in Los
Angeles in 1983, may wonder what is meant by progress in self psychology. If, as Goldberg says in his excellent preface, "What Heinz Kohut offered us was … simply (and profoundly) a new theory" (p. 63), is progress the explication of that theory by its most preeminent students? Or, is progress case illustrations that provide evidence for the theory's therapeutic effectiveness? Or, is progress addendums or revisions in the theory itself? In fact, Volume 1 contains papers that attempt each of these ways to proceed.
Two presentations of straightforward explications stand out. "How Kohut Actually Worked," by Jule Miller, is a charming, highly readable, informative account of the author's experience of being supervised by Kohut. Miller conveys Kohut's personal style, the kind and type of advice he received from Kohut, and the manner in which Kohut interpreted Miller's patient's material. Miller offers descriptions of what Kohut regarded as fragmentations, mini-fragmentations, gross identification, and transmuting internalizations. He ably illustrates many important technical precepts that can only be inferred from Kohut's own writings: the analyst should take analytic material first in a "straight" manner, as if it means what it seems to mean, rather than assume a complex encoded message that must be manipulated in order to be understandable. The analyst works in terms of relatively broad interventions that follow the main line of the material, and avoids interpreting details such as slips of the tongue or puns in dreams. He does not hesitate to indicate to a