"Peter Buirski and Amanda Kottler have taken up the challenge of updating the almost 40 years of creative play with Heinz Kohut's groundbreaking concepts of self, empathy, and self-object transferences. Through well-chosen contributors, the editors skillfully balance advances in theory with an increasing sophistication in applying the theories to clinical practice with individuals, groups, and in supervision. The cumulative result provides a stimulating entry into the dynamic thinking of a group of interrelated but very individualistic self psychologists." --Joseph D. Lichtenberg, M.D., editor-in-chief, Psychoanalytic Inquiry; author, Craft and Spirit: A Guide to the Exploratory Psychotherapies "Offering a wide range of subjects and authors who are contributing to the evolution of theory and clinical practice of contemporary self psychology, this book is replete with clinical applications of theoretical innovation to patients of all ages, groups, and families. The detailed clinical work is especially edifying and will bring the reader in on current "hot topics"-for example, systems theory, attachment theory, implicit/explicit, improvisation, and enactment-in the further development of self psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis.

" --James L. Fosshage, Ph.D., president, The International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology; co-author (with Joseph Lichtenberg and Frank Lachma "The eminently practical contributions gathered in this volume expand the horizons of self psychology to encompass a broad range of contemporary psychoanalytic and interdisciplinary perspectives and therapeutic modalities. Readers will be richly rewarded." --Robert D. Stolorow, Ph.D.

, author, Trauma and Human Existence.