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Jerome Blackman is a kind man, an outstanding clinician, and a consummate teacher. Involved in the education and training of psychiatric residents for many decades, he is deeply familiar with their trepidations about practicing psychotherapy. Such empathic immersion in the novice's subjectivity, coupled with the reparative praxis of didactics, has resulted in Blackman's writing the text under review here. Patterned loosely upon his earlier 101 Defenses: How the Mind Shields Itself , the current book offers “solutions to 101 tricky problems in psychotherapy.” In fact, this phrase constitutes the book's subtitle.
Blackman's book is divided into seven sections, namely (i) a very quick take on assessment and technique, (ii) general principles about treatment, (iii) techniques with different types of disturbances, (iv) techniques with acting in and acting out, (v) your reactions to people in treatment, (vi) modifications to the frame of treatment, and (vii) special issues. Each of these sections contains a list of problems. Each problem is elucidated with a “short answer” and a “long answer.” Most such responses are illustrated with brief clinical vignettes. Pithy summaries of theoretical rationale behind a particular intervention are often provided in boxes type-set into the main text. Many such boxes contain clinical tips as well. Within this format, Blackman raises “problems,” “issues,” “areas,” and “topics” that psychotherapy trainees regularly struggle with. Here are some examples:
How to stop people from quitting therapy?
People who ask you to hug them or want to hug you.
People who accuse you of not paying attention.
Women who bring an infant to the session.
People who ask to borrow a magazine.
Countertransference to marital arguments.
Questions about your theoretical orientation.