Intimate Attachments: Toward a New Self-Psychology. Morton Shane, Estelle Shane, Mary Gales. New York & London:  The Guilford Press, 1997.  241 pp.

The major premise of this book is that the intimate relationship between patient and analyst goes beyond classical transferences because of the development of a positive new experience. This new experience is an opportunity to reexperience the patient's past in the presence of a different person, the analyst, who reacts in ways that can promote growth of the patient's self and his/her self-in-relation-to-others.

The emphasis is on “the importance and value of positive new experience in the clinical situation” (p. 1). The authors have based their approach on a model they propose as an integration of self-psychology, attachment theory, infant research, trauma studies, developmental systems research, and brain research. The goal of analysis is “the self coming into being as a consolidated self” and connecting with the analyst as “an intimate other” with whom the patient feels safe and comfortable. Their assumption is that “given an adequate constitutional endowment, self and self-with-other consolidation will emerge” (p. 3).

The authors describe two key elements in the styles of interaction which promote intrapersonal and interpersonal growth. The first is the “dimension of intimacy” which refers to “how the patient and the