[en] A detailed treatment of the theoretical and experimental aspects of the symmetric (e,2e) reaction in atoms, molecules and solids is presented. Two experimental arrangements are described for measuring angular correlations and separation energy spectra, the one arrangement employing coplanar and the other noncoplanar symmetric kinematics. The latter arrangement is shown to be particularly suitable for extracting information. The basic approximation, the factorized distorted-wave off-shell impulse approximation with fully distorted waves, is shown to correctly describe the reaction in some test cases, as does the phase distortion approximation. At energies of the order of 1200 eV the simple eikonal and plane wave approximations adequately describe the valence shell cross sections for light atoms and molecules containing first row elements. Energy independent structure information is obtained on: (a) shapes and magnitudes of the square of the momentum space wave functions for individual electron orbitals; (b) separation energies for individual ion eigenstates; (c) the characteristic orbital of each state; and (d) spectroscopic factors describing the probability that an eigenstate contains the principal configuration of a hole in the characteristic orbital for each eigenstate. Comparison is made with photoelectron spectroscopy and Compton scattering, since they separately yield some of the information obtained by the (e,2e) method. A brief summary is given of other electron-electron coincidence experiments. (Auth.)