The Analyst's Analyst Within, by Lora Heims Tessman,  The Analytic Press,  Hillsdale, NJ, 2003,  363 pp., $57.50

This is a unique, fascinating, sophisticated research study, which explores how psychoanalysts' experiences with their own analysts are remembered, the sense of satisfaction or dissatisfaction in retrospect, and how they influenced their personal and professional worlds. All psychoanalysts will appreciate this book, irrespective of their theoretical orientations. They will be drawn into their own recollections and will emerge from this illuminating journey with many reflections of their own. The author, a training analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society, interviewed 34 psychoanalysts (thirty are members of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute or Society and four are from other parts of the country). Most of these were training analysts and shared the same history and institutional practices. Many of the participants had had two analyses, prior to or after their training analyses or had had another extended therapy with an analyst. Older as well as youngeranalysts were interviewed, reflecting analyses that took place over five decades, from 1945 to 1995. As psychoanalytic theory as well as institutional practice changed greatly over this period of time, the time that the analyses occurred was considered a variable when tabulating responses. The stance of neutrality to induce a transference neurosis and the central focus on Oedipal conflicts shifted to new considerations introduced by ego psychology and object relation theories. Another variable considered was the influence of four gender combinations, derived from pairing male or female analysts and male or female analysands. While a list of very general questions to be explored was included in the letter to potential participants, the interviews (two to eight hours per participant) were open-ended to catch the individuals' own language and expression. The responses of the interviewees reveal Tessman to be a skilled interviewer, avoiding leading questions and allo