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How to begin a review of this exemplary book? Do you want a review of the history of psychoanalytic development? It's here. A review of linguistics from Saussure and its relationship to psychoanalysis? Here too. How about structuralism and its manifestations in linguistics, anthropology (Levi-Strauss), cognitive development (Piaget), and yes even early Freud? Step right up. Perhaps a review of child development and the psychoanalytic models from the infant as possessing nascent knowledge through most everything developed by 6 months, including the Oedipus (Klein) through developmental lines more akin to Piaget's levels (Anna Freud through Daniel Stern and others)? Of course, Shapiro the child psychiatrist and analyst and baby watcher (what he calls himself and others like him) has this here.
You may also be surprised that Shapiro not only reviews psychoanalytic theories but points out how different theoretical models from topographic through relational can be applied to different clinical situations. He is concerned that some psychoanalytic models, such as strict hermeneutics or “empathetic” will undermine the scientific rigor of psychoanalysis as a science, or as Bob Wallerstein preferred, a discipline. All this and more are in this book.
Actually, two books. The substance of the one book is a collection of papers over several decades. These are not chronological but rather topical. The second book is the five introductory sections that describe how these papers are clustered, such as the relationship of language to psychoanalysis. And by language, Shapiro points out in an elegant chapter with Makari, we include gesture, posture, intonation, and the performance or pragmatics of psychoanalytic dialogue. That stifled dialogue in which one speaker is given precedence (via free association) and the other says only what is needed to be said to facilitate the speaker's self-knowledge. An analyst in this sense is like an editor:
The author's (analysand's) voice should pr