Review Essay

Handbook of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, edited by Marylou Lionells, John Fiscalini, Carola H. Mann, and Donnel B. Stern, Hillsdale: The Analytic Press, 1995, 928 pp., $99.50 (hardcover).

Pioneers of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, edited by Donnel B. Stern, Carola H. Mann, Stuart Kantor, and Gary Schlesinger, Hillsdale: The Analytic Press, 1995, 272 pp., $59.95 (hardcover), $29.95 (paperback).

Of all the principal psychoanalytic schools in contemporary America—Freudian or classical, object relations, self psychological, and interpersonal—the last has stood at the greatest remove from orthodoxy, in part because its founders, most notably Sullivan and Fromm, were not closely linked to the institutional centers. The growing emphasis of world analysis on relational experience, however, as both an influence on personality development and with important implications for treatment, has thrown most of the schools closer together, and the rich contributions of the so-called interpersonalists have made this proximity of even greater importance. It might be thought that the genetic “turn” so prominent in general psychiatry and the culture at large would have the opposite effect, but the genetic influence has been more and more balanced by evidence for a strong relational contribution to the forming of human brains (Eisenberg, 1995)

The two books prompting these remarks are the most complete and forthright statements of the interpersonal position available. They provide an opportunity to review this position, its gradually emergent effects on clinical work particularly, and the problems and possible solutions resulting.

If interpersonal work begins in any one place, it is in Sullivan's contention that psychopathological efforts start with a study of peoples' impact on one another and with the realization that this inquiry intself illustrates the process and problems under investigation. For example, how do we separate the two impacts: What is you and