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Psychoanalysis has undergone change during its entire existence. In America psychoanalysis has sustained perhaps its longest period of hegemony and stability. With the publication of Kohut's works in the 70s, psychoanalysis again became dynamic here as elsewhere. Rowe and Mac Isaacs's book is, therefore, timely as lines of thinking and clinical work initiated by Kohut become better known and accepted throughout the mental health community. It offers many advantages over other popular presentations of the self-psychological approach.
Psychoanalysts who argue that Kohut was presenting nothing new—that analysts were practicing consistently with his ideas all along—would do well to examine the present volume. Practitoners new to psychoanalysis in general, and to self psychology in particular, should be cautious, however, since many of the pronouncements are made in a manner that could lead to acceptance of relatively untested ideas and practices.
There is much to metabolize and if concepts like “metabolize” applied to intellectual content are bothersome, the reader may wish to seek understanding elsewhere. This work is replete with metaphors embodied in such self-psychological constructs as “transmuting internalization,” “experience-near” and “experience-distant,” “disintegration products,” and the sine qua non, “empathic attunement.” Lack of familiarity with these concepts