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Contemporary self psychology is lucky to have issued from a founder whose legacy included—with whatever conflicts—continuing innovation. Although Kohut held tightly to his ideas during his lifetime, he anticipated that his followers would modify his theories after his death, and therefore, at times, even urged the process along. Thus, over recent years, self psychology has changed, expanding into relationally based theories and joining a convergence of analytic ideas flowing from different contemporary thinkers and schools. Stolorow et al, for example, created intersubjective systems theory by borrowing heavily from and then building a systems theory on Kohutian notions. And Shane and Magid have explored the meeting of Self Psychology and Relational ideas while remaining faithful to basic Kohutian principles. Now, tributaries carrying Kohutian ideas about empathy and selfobject experience, relational ideas about mutual influence and analytic subjectivity, and intersubjective ideas about the analytic field and dynamic systems are merging into new conceptual organizations. Intersubjective Self Psychology: A Primer, a collection of essays edited by George Hagman, Harry Paul, and Peter B. Zimmermann, is a fine example of such a merger. The authors of the book are senior analysts from TRISP, a New York psychoanalytic institute. They are also practicing clinicians.
Well-written with an absence of analytic jargon, ISP is designed to answer the need for an understandable, but not simplistic, introduction to self psychology and intersubjective systems. It accomplishes this goal in the form of one unique synthesis of the two theories. As the authors state, the book is intended to be a clinical guide, “practical, useful, and filled with clinical concepts and ideas which the reader will readily be able to apply to his/her therapy practice” (p.xiii). It provides the authors’ model with many clinical applications that should serve as a resource for lay readers, for patients curiou