Lichtenberg collates and summarizes recent findings about the first two years of life in order to examine their implications for contemporary psychoanalysis. He explores the implications of these data for the unfolding sense of self, and then draws on these data to reconceptualize the analytic situation and to formulate an experiential account of the therapeutic action of analysis.

Joseph D. Lichtenberg, M.D., is Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanaytic Inquiry, Director Emeritus of the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and past President of the International Council for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. He has authored and edited numerous books and articles, including Craft and Spirit: A Guide to the Exploratory Psychotherapies (Analytic Press, 2005) and, with Frank Lachmann and James Fosshage, A Sprit of Inquiry: Communication in Psychoanalysis (Analytic Press, 2002).

I. The Neonate 1. The Challenge for Psychoanalytic Theory from Neonate Research 2. How Can We Examine the Beginning Sense of Self and Object? II. The First Year 3. Toward and Adaptational Perspective on the First Year 4. Do We Need to Postulate Self-Object Differentiation in the First Year? 5. Additional Timetable Considerations 6. Reflections on Id and Ego in the First Year III. The Second Year 7. The Beginnings of an Imaging Capacity and Sign-Signal Informational Exchange 8. Speculations on the Self-as-a-Whole as an "Emergent Property" 9. The Effect of Assertiveness and Genital Awareness on the Emergent Self 10. Symbolic Representation and Consolidation of Sense of Self IV. Applications 11. Erotogenic Zones Versus Alternative Organizational Models of Infancy 12. The Psychoanalytic Situation and Infancy 13. An Experiential Conception of What Is Curative in Psychoanalysis