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In the opening pages of Mutuality, Recognition, and the Self, Christine Kieffer tells us that her book is a reflection of the continuous process of integration that has marked the development of her thinking over the course of many years as a psychoanalytic clinician: “It will be evident to the reader that my approach to psychoanalytic intervention has evolved from a more Winnicottian and self-psychological perspective to one that has integrated intersubjective and relational perspectives on development, psychopathology, and therapeutic action” (p. xv). Kieffer not only demonstrates that this integration has taken place in her thinking but also shows us something of how it happened along the way. She makes certain that the reader knows where she is coming from as she presents, chapter by chapter, the offspring of this integrative process.
Read at another level, the book provides a model of how a psychoanalytic thinker may continue to grow as a result of many years of close engagement in clinical work. This should provide a special pleasure for anyone interested in the process of theory building in the field of psychoanalysis and also in the development of its practitioners' psychoanalytic minds.
In the prologue, Kieffer articulates certain dichotomies in psychoanalytic thinking (such as one- and two-person psychology, provision versus conflict, empathy versus authenticity, unitary self or multiple selves) that have led to polarization rather than integration. Her approach is to find “the truth of self-development and therapeutic action … within the dialectic tension between these various poles” (p. xix).
Kieffer's exploration centers on matters of mutuality and recognition in the development of the self. In the course of doing some background
reading for this review, I discovered the following passage in an early paper by Jessica Benjamin that may provide a conceptual framework for readers less familiar with the foundational intersubjective theory that informs this