Intersubjective Self Psychology: A Primer Edited by George Hagman, Harry Paul, and Peter B. Zimmermann. New York, NY:  Routledge, 2019,  203 pp.

Let me begin by saying that this book is indeed a primer and a fine one at that, for it teaches the basic tenets of intersubjective self psychology (ISP) with such conceptual clarity and clinical exemplification that it deserves to be read by all psychoanalytic practitioners, regardless of orientation.

Although 10 analysts author various chapters of the book, with each having his or her own voice, it reads as a coherent, well- organized narrative, and the writing is uniformly substantial and instructive. The volume commences with an explication of how intersubjectivity theory evolves out of, but differs from, Kohutian self psychology. The authors distinguish intersubjective self psychology from a more classical iteration by following Stolorow and Atwood, who claim that

psychological phenomena in general cannot be understood apart from the intersubjective context, by which they mean the psychological field that is generated by the intersection of the psychological world of one person with the psychological world of another as well as with the world at large. (p. 7)

For intersubjectivists, psychological health and illness are both generated by the intersubjective contexts in which a person lives or has lived. Intersubjectivity is a psychoanalytic theory because it holds that there exists an important unconscious dimension to subjectivity that is grounded in what Stolorow and Atwood call