Coparticipant inquiry avoids a reductionistic biological individualism (the isolated individual mind or the intrapsychic), which fails to take suffi- cient account of the clinical role of object relations or interpersonal rela- tions. It also avoids the reductionistic social determinism of the partici- pant-observer tradition in clinical work (the intersubjective mind), which has failed to take sufficient clinical account of human agency, will, and per- sonal responsibility. Coparticipant inquiry integrates the dialectic of human singularity and human similarity in a way that participant-observation and classical para- digms do not. Further, whereas the clinical emphases of the classical and participant-observation paradigms have been, respectively, on the imper- sonal and the interpersonal, coparticipant inquiry focuses on the personal. This book traces the evolution of coparticipant practice in psycho- analysis, clarifies its singular properties, delineates its core principles, and explores its clinical implications. This necessitates a fresh look at the con- cept of the self. In particular, I address the clinical and theoretical implica- tions of a dialectical relationship between various aspects of a proposed five-dimensional self. This multidimensional concept of the self is an attempt to reconcile the antinomy or paradox that mankind is simultane- ously communal and individual–-both embedded in a series of social fields of experience and behavior and yet also always uniquely individual. All of us are both part of others and yet also apart. Coparticipant inquiry deals with the dialectic and paradoxical nature of the self in a more comprehen- sive fashion than either classical theory or participant-observation. This question of the self and its clinical dialectics is examined in part 2 (chap- ters 4–5). Narcissism, or the perversion of the self, is explored in part 3 (chapters 6–9). I define narcissism in the broadest sense as a complex of dynamic processes that characteristically involve or impact upon some aspect of selfhood. In my opinion, the dynamism of narcissism represents a core dimension of all psychological disorders—a kind of master neurosis— rather than a discrete diagnostic entity. As the clinical expression of self- pathology, narcissism is, in a sense, the self gone wrong. The study of nar- cissism thus gives us a particularly advantageous way to examine the coparticipant analysis of the self, particularly of those dimensions of the self I call the personal and interpersonal selves. The study of the clinical dialectics and coparticipant treatment of these opposed aspects of the self forms one of the central themes of the book. I see the study of narcissism, arguably today’s dominant psychopathology, as integral to the central con- cern of the book: the study of the self and its coparticipant inquiry. The last and largest section of the book represents some of my ideas about the nature and problems of psychoanalytic therapy. Part 4 (chapters x Preface