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This is a remarkable book. Practicing psychoanalysis, at its best, is a highly developed skill combining knowledge, experience, and an interwoven activity of observation, empathy, perception, and intuition. The experience of an hour often leaves us
with a sense of fascination, but also with some sadness that the spirit and quality of that complex and transitory event can never be conveyed nor duplicated. We console ourselves by thinking of our activity as a form of art. But Thomas Ogden, blessed with the exquisite skills of a writer, the interest of a theoretician, as well as the sensitive ability of a superb practitioner, is equal to the challenge.
In this book on intersubjectivity, Ogden captures the elusive, ghostly transactions of the consulting room. Psychoanalysis, after all, can be a splendid instrument. Psychoanalysis is in bad repute and we need “this fine display of the artistry of analysis,” to use James Grotstein's words of commendation which are found on the jacket. The book is not about a novel phenomenon, unless there is a sense of revelation in this unusual macroscopic description of a familiar experience. As we are social animals, some sense of intra- and interpersonal transaction has existed since the birth of our discipline. The unconscious and conscious were conceived to be in various degrees of dialectical tension. Transference and countertransference belong to our basic vocabulary, and the schools of thought that focused on the interpersonal or on object relations observed, described, and greatly expanded our knowledge of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. But the diversity, uniqueness, and changing-as-it-happens character of an event makes us find refuge in patterns of recurrence and continuity. We acknowledge that process but keep it at a distance. Ogden's descriptions heighten our sensitivity, making explicit what is left implicit. He is not only concerned with the happenings in the consulting room, for the processes he describes are basic