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From Id to Intersubjectivity is, in many ways, an ambitious undertaking. Diana Kenny, an Australian analyst, sets out to elucidate the links and fissures between the different branches of contemporary psychoanalysis. She is particularly interested in two questions: “What remains of Freud in current psychoanalytic theorizing and practice? And to what extent are the different branches of contemporary psychoanalysis linked conceptually and in practice?” (p. 323).
Kenny compares psychodynamic models as they pertain to key analytic tenets, including transference-countertransference dynamics, resistance, and the unconscious, as well as the analyst's role in treatment. She writes:
Psychoanalysis has had a long gestation and has experienced multiple rebirths over the course of its history, leading some current authors to complain that there has been such a proliferation of theories of psychoanalysis over the past 115 years that the field has become theoretically fragmented and is in disarray…. The aim of this book is to assess the degree of actual, as opposed to imagined, fragmentation of psychoanalytic theory and practice. [p. 2]
Previous comparative studies have either contrasted theories in a didactic manner,1 interviewed noted analysts from varying schools of