Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self By Peter Fonagy, Gyorgy Gergely, Eliot Jurist, Mary Target New York:  Other Press, 2002.  577 pp.

Although this book very thoroughly discusses many of the current issues in child development, such as attachment and mother/infant attunement, the concepts of analytic praxis proposed add little to ideas on current practice. I am suggesting that this is because of the authors' scientific approach to the understanding of analytic practice. In this review I have critiqued their scientific approach and have outlined some of the features of a phenomenological mode of analytic practice as a contrast to the authors' perspective.

The four authors of this book all have academic appointments that involve various aspects of psychoanalysis. Peter Fonagy, the senior author, is a training and supervising analyst in child and adult analysis in the British Psychoanalytical Society, and Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis at the University of London. Gyorgy Gergely is a clinical psychologist, Director of the Developmental Psychology Laboratory of the Psychology Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Senior Lecturer in the Cognitive Developmental Doctoral Program of the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest. Eliot Jurist is a Professor of Philosophy at Hofstra University, and a Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University. Mary Target is an Associate Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and a Senior Lecturer in Psychoanalysis at University College London.

A good example of the authors' scientific approach is their assertion that “we rely on attachment theory, which provides empirical support for the notion that an infant's sense of self emerges from the affective quality of the relationship with the primary caregiver” (p. 2). The notion of “empirical support” implies that the relational phenomena are not being understood on their own terms but, rather, are being reduced to an underlying explanatory principle—in this case, attachment. In addition, the authors' definitions of