Review of The Interpersonal Perspective in Psychoanalysis, 1960s–1990s: Rethinking Transference and Countertransference, edited by Donnel B. Stern, Ph.D. and Irwin Hirsch, Ph.D.  Routledge, 2017.  310 pp. and Review of Further Developments in Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, 1980s–2010s: Evolving Interest in the Analyst’s Subjectivity, edited by Donnel B. Stern, Ph.D. and Irwin Hirsch, Ph.D.  Routledge, 2018.  333 pp.

“A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.” Leonard Bernstein

Two volumes edited by Donnel B. Stern and Irwin Hirsch are entitled, The Interpersonal Perspective in Psychoanalysis, 1960s-1990s: Rethinking Transference and Countertransference and Further Developments in Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, 1980s-2010s: Evolving Interest in the Analyst’s Subjectivity. These important volumes are part of a series called Psychoanalysis in A New Key Books Series. In the recent movie, Maestro, Leonard Bernstein’s commitment to music drove and often pushed his creations in unexpected directions, but for Bernstein it was always about the music.

Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Series is also true to the aims of psychoanalysis and yet pushes the reader in new directions. The series offers the reader a map to the evolution of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and moreover, as Philip M. Bromberg describes, allows the “reader to feel-into the psychoanalytic meaning of interpersonal.” And although it is not part of this review, these two volumes are chronologically preceded by another, entitled Pioneers of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis.

This earlier work, published in 1995, can be seen as a prequel to the two volumes being reviewed here. Taken together, they allow the reader to follow the emerging arc of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis.

It seems sufficiently self-explanatory that every analyst or analytically oriented therapist truly interested in the history and evolution of psychoanalysis, and Interpersonal psychoanalysis specifically, should consider this collection essential reading; as to make this review difficult to write. However, in the introduction in the first volume, Donnel Stern points out an ignorance of the importance of the work of the Interpersonalists. Stern states, “there are good reasons for this ignorance, reasons that are familiar to all Interpersonalists and probably to most mai