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This book is an excellent example of the theoretical limitations of a “classical” psychoanalyst, fortunately when placed within the context of a clinically astute and literature-wise practitioner. The author, a senior training analyst with the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, presents the reader with three sections of chapters (almost all published previously in the same or earlier versions) that, unfortunately, although perhaps bringing new knowledge to some “classical” analysts, offer little of a genuinely new or exciting nature to the vast majority of academy members or trainees. Two very outstanding and creative analysts, W. W. Meissner and George Pollack, offer summary and laudatory comments on the book's flyleaf about Modell's concept of “complementarity”—the integrating of a “one-person and two-person” frame of reference—along with his particularly addressing the role of affects in the diadic field. Unfortunately, Meissner's and Pollack's own imaginative, and at times breathtaking, accomplishments far outstrip this thoughtful book by both an evidently excellent clinician and a scholarly savant in the area of “classical” psychoanalytic theory and philosophy (Ricoeur, Pelanyi, etc.).
Sadly, with all the author's sincerity and wisdom, he evidently views the issues around the role of affect in the transference/countertransference field, for example, as new ideas: not so to academy members. He gives very short shrift to the enormous clinical contributions of Kohut and Kernberg, instead choosing to focus on the discrepancies between theory and practice that nearly all those familiar with these figures regard as one of the on-going inadequacies in the scientific bases of psychoanalysis.
Modell presents some excellent clinical issues, i.e., feigned and manipulative affects in relation to Winnicott's “false self.” Indeed, his material on Winnicott (my favorite analyst and perhaps his) is the best portion of the book (Chapters 6 and 7), since it focuses on the “holding e