Handbook of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis. Marylou Lionells, John Fiscalini, Carola H. Mann, Donnel B. Stern, eds. Hillsdale, NJ:  The Analytic Press, 1995.  xii + 914 pp.

Interpersonal psychoanalysis began not only as a reaction to the biologism of classical psychoanalytic theory but also as a protest against the theoretical dogmatism of the American Psychoanalytic Association. When the New York Institute dismissed Karen Horney as a training analyst and limited her teaching to a seminar for advanced students, Clara Thompson, in a jubilant affirmation of academic freedom, led Horney and three other faculty members out the front door singing, “Go Down, Moses.” Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich Fromm, and Frieda Fromm-Reichmann joined Thompson in creating a separate, alternative intellectual tradition within psychoanalysis.

Although there were vast conceptual differences among the founders of interpersonal psychoanalysis, they were united in their shared commitment to intellectual freedom. Over the past seventy years, they, and their followers, generated a diverse corpus of theoretical and clinical literature. There is no single unified theory of interpersonal psychoanalysis; rather, there exists a variety of theories that each claim the interpersonal field as its primordial generative structure.

The editors of the Handbook recognized the need for a standard reference text that would provide a comprehensive review and synthesis of