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In their chapter, “The Myth of the Isolated Mind,” Stolorow and Atwood once again demonstrate their unusual acuity for critical issues that vex our field. They address several major areas, including concepts of mind, psychic structure, development, change, and reality, all redefined within the context they call intersubjective and with a philosophical tone that suggests a major reorientation. This is a lot of ground to cover in a short discussion, so I will limit myself to raising some questions about a few of the points that I think of as central and that are emblematic of the broader features of these authors' general perspective. I apologize in advance for giving short shrift to these large and complex issues.
Stolorow and Atwood begin their chapter by decrying the characterization of mind as distinct from body and claim that “the idea of mind as a separate entity implies an independence of the essential being of the person from engagement with others” (p. 9).1 This position is a harbinger of the orientation of the rest of the chapter—which is really a modified version of the first chapter in their book Contexts of Being (1992)—insofar as it is a bold but also I think somewhat overstated description of the issue in question. It is one thing, I think, to describe a person's mind as independent and quite another to derive from that a position of “alienation” or essential separateness from others. Yes,