Psychotherapy and Personality Changes (Co-ordinated Research Studies in the Client-Centered Approach). Edited by Carl R. Rogers and Rosaline F. Dymond.  447 pp.  The University of Chicago Press, 1954. $6.

To this reader, this book was an emotionally satisfying and exciting experience. Pervading the entire text is the true scientific quest for greater understanding rather than for answers. Perhaps the spirit is best exemplified when Rogers states, “we prefer to live with this dilemma until we understand it more deeply and perhaps can develop more sensitive theories as well as better instruments to deal with it,” and this is the basic attitude which underlies the book and the therapeutic approach described.

Supported by the Medical Sciences Division of the Rockefeller Foundation for a five-year period, the authors set out to test whether people do change, and if so, what it is that changes, and what it is that either effects the change or obstructs it? A primary decision was which frame of reference—i.e., theoretical basis—was to be used. For research advantage, the hypotheses tested were derived from and related to a body of theory sufficiently coherent to allow progressive integration of knowledge as new research facts became available. Three bodies of theory have primarily been utilized 1) the personality theory of client-centered therapy 2) the fields of learning theory and