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Arguing for a return to an appreciation of intrapsychic dynamics, as well as outlining the many faces of narcissism, Dr. Giovacchini has contributed, yet again, to a sober, erudite, and intelligent understanding of psychoanalysis. His focus in this work is on the vicissitudes of narcissism-its positive and negative manifestations as reflected in current psychoanalytic schools as well as in individual pathology.
Giovacchini first turns his gaze on self psychology. Critical of Kohut's clinical evidence for his model, Giovacchini argues that Kohut's self-analysis, masquerading as the two analyses of Mr. Z, is theoretically weak and flawed. He critiques Kohut's introduction of such terms as selfobject or transmuting internalization as unnecessary and at times confusing. He writes, “Regarding structure, Kohut again makes up a new word by plastering two familiar words together and then believes he has expressed something novel. Selfobject is a case in point” (p. 61). Although Giovacchini writes of both personal and collegial friendship with Kohut, his pervasive negative assessment of self psychology is obvious:
Placing the idealizing and mirroring transference in a preobject phase, that is, primary narcissism, makes no conceptual sense, since transference is a type of object relationship, and as the mind is viewed as a hierarchically ordered continuum, transference would be an element in all object relations. (p. 57)
Giovacchini comments on the idealization rampant in the analytic world. He is as critical of those followers of Freud, for example, as he is of the followers of Kohut who turn admiration into adulation. He singles out Stephen Mitchell for the clarity of his writings; he is, however, dismissive toward the intersubjectivists, notably Robert Stolorow and George Atwood, for employing postmodern philosophical language that is arcane or has no clinical relevance. In this context, Giovacchini writes: “Changing the lexicon does not create new ideas. It