The Wide-Ranging Worlds of Frank Lachmann

Frank Lachmann—I have a Santa Claus transference to him that may bias this review. It started several years ago at my First Self Psychology Conference when, as a new student at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, alone and shy, I took a seat at the first plenary session. To mask self-consciousness and to take the temperature of this new community, I began to people watch. Several rows ahead of me a man and woman stood engaged in conversation. The man's body leaned easily into the conversation as he listened with twinkling eyes and merry intensity. “That woman must be very smart,” I thought, “What must she be saying to magnetize such rapt and buoyant attention?” Evidently, it must have been something very funny, for suddenly the man exploded in laughter. He threw back his head and shoulders so that his back and chest arched in pleasure. Had his belly been larger, I thought, it would have “shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.” I smiled as I watched him and felt myself relax. “Santa!” How I wanted in on that conversation! I said to myself that with members like this man, so present and so spirited, this self psychology group must be okay. Later I learned the man was Frank Lachmann. So began my Santa Claus transference.

In the spirit of Santa Claus, Frank Lachmann has recently gifted us with practically a sleighful of books: Infant Research and Adult Treatment: Co-Constructing Interactions, A Spirit of Inquiry: Communication in Psychoanalysis, and Transforming Aggression: Psychotherapy with the Difficult-to-Treat Patient. This is a veritable