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This slender volume is better classified as a monograph than a book. The authors offer a summary of their previous contributions to psychoanalytic theory and practice. Chief among these is their depiction of the analytic process as an “intersubjective field,” that is, a specific psychological field constituted by the interplay of two subjectivities—that of the patient and that of the analyst. This contribution has found its distinctive place in psychoanalytic theory. They also offer some illustrative, though abbreviated, clinical case material. The principle raison d'être of the book consists of the authors' presentation of contextualism. Here they expand on a previous work, Contexts of Being (Stolorow and Atwood, 1992) where they called attention to the importance of seeing and understanding fundamental psychological constructs, such as mind, unconscious, and mind-body-relations, in their developmental and ongoing intersubjective contexts. They emphasize how any particular principles of subjective experience and the organizing principles that govern those experiences are co-created, that is, created by the specific organizing principles of the co-participants. Clearly this principle, which I shall elaborate later, is an important addition to our understanding of psychogenic development and also our understanding of transference and countertransference in the psychoanalytic process.
In chapter one, the authors review their previous contributions concerning intersubjectivity theory. They emphasize how intersubjectivity theory “see humans as organizers of experience, as subjects.” (p. 5) They correctly point out that intersubjectivity is not so much a theory as it is a sensibility, that is, an “attitude of continuing sensitivity” to the interplay of subjectivities between patient