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This is an ambitious book—possibly too ambitious. Hoffman attempts to accomplish too much here and, despite evident erudition, she skims most of her topics and frequently presents a one-sided point of view, with long digressions into peripheral issues that break up the train of her argument. I will try to summarize her topics in the order she takes them up.
Hoffman's main point is that a relational approach to psychoanalytic therapy can parallel “the” (rather than “a”) Christian narrative of incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. The three relational steps she poses as parallels are identification, surrender, and gratitude. For Hoffman, these three “movements” culminate in “mutual recognition.” Although fleshing out the parallelism that Hoffman envisions would be enough of a task, she does not limit herself to that but goes into diversions, each of which could also be a book-length thesis.
Hoffman begins by proposing a philosophical basis for her Christian theology—a philosophy that she also sees as supporting her relational stance in therapy. She bases her three-step Christian narrative in a way of reading Hegel and Ricoeur. Her reading of Hegel relies on scholars who she says do not view Hegel's Absolute Spirit as so transcendent as to not engage in real relationship with humanity. However, Hoffman is committed to a divinity who is absolutely immanent. Hoffman says that she does not want to engage in debate with Hegel scholars since she is engaging with Hegel
[N]ot with a modernist search for the objective truth of his ideas, but with a postmodern sensibility that studies his work for resonance, for a renewed understanding of the narrative symbols they depict—the incarnate infant, the cross, the empty tomb—that have given rise to the thoughts relational psychoanalysts are thinking. (p. 12)
Thus, it seems that for Hoffman it is not important what Hegel may have meant or how most of his scholarly readers understand him; what is important for her is what she finds i