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Donald Moss published his first sole-authored article in The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1986. Its title was “Pseudoquotes in Psychoanalytic Interventions,” and its topic was a peculiar verbal tic that some, if not all, analysts display at one time or another. The “pseudoquote,” Moss explained, occurs when “the analyst speaks for the patient, uses the pronoun ‘I,‘ as though he were, for the moment, the voice of the patient.” It might take the form of an echo, a paraphrase, or a best guess about what is going on in the patient's mind—spoken by the analyst as if it was the patient speaking. In such moments, Moss wrote:
The first person voice carries a second person predicate. For the moment, “I” is “you.” This odd configuration is transient; it passes quickly. It seems strategic, a result of some intention. It solves a problem. When the problem disappears, the “I” and “you” of the psychoanalytic dialogue return to their familiar positions.
Thirty-some years and thirty-plus articles later—not to mention several influential books—Moss returned to this primal intellectual scene with a book titled, simply, Iand You (Second Story Press, ). As a physical object, I and You was more of a chapbook, like something you might find in the poetry section of your local independent bookstore. Its content and layout also gave it the appearance of poetry. Only a brief note in the book's front matter explained otherwise:
Each day, for one year, at the end of every session, I wrote down one sentence my patient had said. Collated, placed, in the order they had been spoken, each sentence seemed to constitute a “line,” each day's sentences a “verse.”
In a sense, Moss was now enacting the dynamic that his article on pseudoquotes had once analyzed. The book presented a version of the psychoanalytic dialogue in which the “I” and the “you” were oddly configured, if only transiently, before returning us to our familiar positions.
Moss's latest book, Psychoanalysis in a Pla