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In this book, the authors develop and explicate their well-known, intersubjective approach to psychoanalytic therapy that is derived from the work of Kohut, to whom the book is dedicated. Here, psychoanalytic inquiry is concerned with an indissoluble system—the intersection of two subjectivities, those of patient and analyst—and seeks to illuminate the phenomena within it. The authors argue that their methods facilitate empathic access to their patients' subjective worlds and enhance the scope and therapeutic power of psychoanalysis. They stress that psychoanalysis, thus conceived, is concerned not with knowledge but with subjective reality, and that psychoanalytic interpretations must be evaluated in relation to hermeneutic criteria, such as logical coherence, comprehensiveness of the explanation, consistency with accepted psychological knowledge, and aesthetic beauty. The working out of these principles in analytic practice is then illustrated in a number of interesting clinical case studies that include such difficult problems as borderline and psychotic states.
This is an extremely interesting and well-argued book that, with its carefully chosen clinical cases, appears to demonstrate the value of the intersubjective approach and the integrative power of Kohut's ideas. However, in doing so it raises some fundamental issues in the study and understanding of psychoanalysis both as a theory and as a therapy, and it is these that I want to examine in this review. These issues concern the relation of hermeneutics, science, and the scientific method to the practice, theory, and understanding of psychoanalysis.
First, I scrutinize the argument that psychoanalytic interpretations should be judged by the criteria of hermeneutics. It is fashionable, perhaps as a counter to the Popperian arguments against the falsifiability of psychoanalytic