Irwin Hirsch is a dedicated and prolific advocate for what has come to be called the relational turn in contemporary psychoanalysis. He is also a fluent and engaging writer, so that his most recent book on “coasting in the countertransference” is both a lucid statement of that point of view and a forthright challenge to the theory and practice of psychoanalysts of all persuasions. He is here concerned primarily with the infinite variety of ways in which analysts, consciously or more often unconsciously, permit their own selfish interests to intrude upon the conduct of their practice, at times to the neglect and even the detriment of the analytic process and of the patients whom they are supposed to be serving.