It was with some disquiet that I decided to review this book. The task is to say something useful to an audience of American psychoanalysts about a book that records an encounter between the psychoanalytic cultures of France and the United States. I was initially skeptical about the book's apparently simple apposition of “self” and “subject.” I was also aware of my own sense of alienation from the current trends in psychoanalysis in America. Yet, alienation could perhaps be a starting point to orient myself to speak to potential readers of this book.

There has been an impetus for reform in American psychoanalysis for the past thirty years, whether in the form of self psychology,