Although Mardi Horowitz's Identity and the New Psychoanalytic Explorations of Self-Organization runs a mere 125 pages, it is one of the most challenging psychoanalytic works I have been asked to review. I would far rather have written a short blurb for it, as it was praised unreservedly by two respected colleagues, the late Robert Wallerstein, who wrote the book's foreword, and Peter Fonagy. When I delved into the book, however, I found quite a few difficulties that I will try to outline here. Horowitz, a leader in the field of identity formation, takes an approach very different from Erik Erikson's, in spite of his adequate and respectful knowledge of Erikson's work. He uses highly clinical material or everyday commonsense stories to illustrate his work, and has devised a system of psychotherapy based on attention to the present moment and