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Almost 50 years ago (I was an early reader), I was swept away by Charles Brenner's Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis, the primer par excellence
for psychoanalysis at the time. Brenner's elegant dogmatism and clarity touched my adolescent needs for the safety of certainty along with the power of omniscience, and seduced me towards a career in psychiatry, and ultimately, psychoanalysis. I suspect that many others were influenced by this essential read for those interested in the dominant psychoanalytic model of that era. It is my opinion that this extraordinary book by Buirski and Haglund might have the same influence on the young and the interested—as well as the old and the restless—of today. As with Brenner's classic, it is highly readable, elegantly dogmatic, and clear in its exposition of the central ideas of one of the most important branches of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. Unlike Brenner, who relied on the power of metapsychology, Buirski and Haglund's primer is filled with clinical material to illustrate the process that defines this approach. Although the title refers only to psychotherapy, it can easily be read as a psychoanalytic reference. I will use the terms interchangeably, hoping not to lose too many readers in doing so.
Emerging on the scene in the early 1980s as a friendly but powerful critique of “classical self psychology” (yes, there is now such an entity), the intersubjective approach has merged with Kohutian thought, enriching it profoundly, and being itself enhanced by the union. The intersubjective approach thus contributes, along with other theoretical streams such as motivational systems theory (Lichtenberg), contemporary developmental models (Beebe & Lachmann, Doctors, Stern), non-linear dynamic systems theory (Shane & Shane, Coburn), specificity theory (Bacal), and relational psychoanalysis (Aron, Slavin, Fosshage) to what is now termed contemporary self psychology. As I understand this continuously emerging versio