Principles of Dynamic Systems, Intersubjectivity, and the Obsolete Distinction Between One-Person and Two-Person Psychologies: A Meeting of Minds: Mutuality in Psychoanalysis by Lewis Aron (Hillsdale, NJ:  The Analytic Press, 1996)

A Meeting of Minds is a wonderful book. Aron's style of articulating his ideas is a metalogue of the content he seeks to articulate. The book's subject matter is “relational-perspectivism,” a broad-based postmodern viewpoint in psychoanalysis that has drawn from interpersonal psychoanalysis, British object relations theory, self psychology, and interactionally oriented contemporary Freudian thinking, and that, according to Aron's account, has reached an integration in the teachings of relational psychoanalysts at the New York University postdoctoral program in psychoanalysis. Essentially, the viewpoint holds that clinical phenomena are relationally constituted and that both participants in the analytic relationship have valuable perspectives on its vicissitudes. Aron presents this viewpoint in a manner that mirrors its basic tenets. His theoretical net is inclusive rather than exclusive. He considers the views of others, including those with whom he disagrees, carefully, respectfully, and fairmindedly rather than dismissively. He invites dialogue among multiple voices in contemporary psychoanalysis,