The Privacy of the Self. Papers on Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique: By M. Masud R. Khan. New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1974. 339 pp.

The author of this volume was a student of Winnicott whose work he carries forward in these studies of disturbances in the 'self experience' which date from 1960 to 1972. Khan not only develops some of Winnicott's key ideas, but shares with him a sensitive perceptiveness that leads to unexpected, novel clinical observations.

Khan's writings represent work that in many ways parallels Kohut's studies on narcissism. The same terrain is explored and the same landmarks can be clearly seen. However, although the point of view is similar and the conclusions often identical, one has a sense of fragments of clinical experience and theoretical work that have not been fit together into a larger synthesis, perhaps because of a parochialism that prevents free exchange between psychoanalytic groups in different countries. Khan's work has been too little noted in the United States and, conversely, although these papers extend to 1972, there is no reference in this volume to current American studies of narcissism. It would be useful to have Khan's views about the specific clinical phenomena of idealizing and mirror transferences, for instance, as systematized vicissitudes of the analytic situation with patients whose self-experiences are seriously disturbed. The concept of self-object is approached by Khan, but is not as specific as it is in Kohut's work.

In Dream Psychology and the Evolution of the Psychoanalytic