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This is probably the first full-length book on supportive psychotherapy written by a psychoanalyst, indeed, by a training analyst. Most mental health practitioners regard supportive psychotherapy as a treatment requiring a lesser degree of training and skill and hence most appropriate for the novice or least well-trained. Werman contests this point of view, contending that supportive psychotherapy is a modality in its own right: "Supportive psychotherapy is not a vague alternative to insight-oriented treatment; it is a well-defined form of psychotherapy and represents a logical application of psychoanalytic concepts to a particular class of patients whose characteristics can usually be clearly identified" (p. ix). He believes that supportive treatment is highly demanding on the therapist inasmuch as he or she is usually dealing with patients who are more disturbed and whose defenses are more primitive than is true of patients in insight-oriented therapies, so that the repertoire of therapeutic interventions is necessarily broader and more varied. He recommends, therefore, that beginners should undertake such treatment only slowly and with sufficient supervision.
The author makes clear from the start that he is not presenting a scholarly review of the subject. He does not include a survey of the literature on the subject. This slim book is only intended as a distillate of his clinical experiences, both as therapist and supervisor. Like the goals associated with the modality of therapy he is describing, the author's aims appear to be limited insofar as he is not attempting in any systematic way to build upon an existing theory of supportive psychotherapy, sparse as it is. Rather, the book has a practical, applied orientation, while systematic principles tend to be deemphasized.
Patients for whom supportive treatment is indicated are (1) those who show significant ego defects of a chronic nature or (2) those who