Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Learning in Clinical Supervision: Edited by Rosemary H. Balsam. Madison, CT:  International Universities Press, 2001,  318 pp., $40.00.

Despite a history of public engagement (evidenced in contributions to innovative care of the military during World War II and in leadership of psychiatric education in the middle of the last century), American psychoanalysts have long been seen as insular—limited in their activities to the confines of their analytic offices and their isolated institutes.

What truth there was in that image has been drastically changed in recent years by the opening of new psychoanalytic institutes, the growth of extension divisions, and the movement of analytic practitioners to wider participation in the community at large.

This volume is one of the fruits of this new movement, and originates in a discussion group for clinical supervisors that was conducted in the early nineties by Rosemary Balsam under the aegis of the Western New England Society for Psychoanalysis. Contributions from twenty experienced supervisors are here brought together. The first half of the book addresses aspects of supervision beyond formal psychoanalyses: such as problems resulting from the current medicalization of psychotherapy, issues related to managed care, use of drugs as part of the therapeutic intervention, emergency situations, work in day care settings, etc. The second half deals more directly with the nature of the work of supervision.

Not directly concerned with psychoanalysis proper, this text grows from and adds to the richness that results when psychoanalytic principles are carried into wider areas of clinical application.