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A Spirit of Inquiry is the third book written collaboratively by these three highly prolific authors, who have made significant contributions, singly and together, integrating and expanding our clinical as well as theoretical understanding of relational, self psychological, developmental, and systems approaches. The breadth and scope of this integration, drawing upon their further elaboration of a novel motivational theory that proposes five innate motivational systems, utilizing data of infant research and neuroscience while offering detailed clinical illustrations, are auspicious. Though a relatively slim book, it is by no means a quick read. It requires a fair amount of careful study, which would be aided by a knowledge of their other works, to absorb and grapple with the wealth of information and extensive formulations offered.
Introducing their central thesis, the authors underscore their notion of the salience of a spirit of inquiry deriving from the early, infantile “exploratory motivational system” in turn, this is to serve as “a guiding attitude, a world view that unites analysts across a spectrum of theories” (p. 2). They state further:
We propose that all communications in analysis, whether about physiological regulation, attachment, exploration, sexuality, or aversiveness, require an underlying persistent spirit of inquiry to give the therapeutic enterprise its guiding purpose. … A spirit of inquiry establishes an ambiance that persists when direct exploratory efforts are prevented by enactments and overwhelming affect states. A spirit of inquiry provides vitality to the psychoanalytic search for subjective and intersubjective awareness. [p. 2]
They continue their introductory thesis, indicating:
We believe that human subjectivity and intersubjectivity cannot be accounted for without an adequate theory of
Page 870motivation and communication. Attachment theory, through its robust integration of strange situation strategies and the linguistic analyses of the Adult