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The life and works of Harry Stack Sullivan are at the center of this massive volume by Marco Conci, a most careful historian of psychoanalysis. This core is preceded by an overview of the developments in American culture leading up to Sullivan, and is followed by subsequent developments influenced by him. I am impressed by the scholarship displayed by the author and am particularly sympathetic to its subject-matter, for I trained many years ago within the interpersonal-cultural school at New York Medical College with Silvano Arieti, who in turn trained at the William Alanson White Institute, co-founded by Sullivan, with Sullivan himself, Clara Thompson, Erich Fromm, and Frieda Fromm-Reichmann—the main protagonists of the school (Arieti, 1978, p. 15). Still earlier than that, I attended American high schools—another experience I share with Marco Conci. Back in Italy after my professional training, a teacher I had in common with Marco Conci was Gaetano Benedetti—another great specialist on schizophrenia, together with Arieti and Sullivan, who wrote the preface to the German edition of Conci's book. Finally, both Marco Conci and I are members both of AAPDP (American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry: an association of independent American psychoanalysts founded in ) and of OPIFER (Organizzazione di Psicoanalisti Italiani—Federazione e Registro: an association of independent Italian psychoanalysts founded in 1996, of which I was the first President). I am also glad I was able to cooperate with Marco Conci on a revision of the English translation of this book. The page references in this review apply to the second edition of the book.
To begin with the central part of this book, Conci makes a careful survey of Sullivan's formative experiences at Saint Elizabeth's Hospital (directed by White) and the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital (directed by Chapman). He then speaks of the influence on Sullivan of the social psychologist George Herbert Mead and of his m