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Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: A Clinical Manual was initially developed as the syllabus for the Columbia psychiatry residents' course on psychodynamic psychotherapy. Classroom-tested over many years, this comprehensive, ambitious, carefully reasoned, well-organized, and clearly written text brilliantly achieves the authors' stated goals of developing “an integrated way of looking at the technique of psychodynamic psychotherapy—and a method for teaching it to trainees” (p. ix). The authors are careful not to espouse any specific theoretical orientation underlying their psychodynamic psychotherapeutic model. However, the depth of their understanding of ego psychology, object relations theory, drive theory, and self psychology is clear from their choice (and their discussions) of the clinical material they present. There are hundreds of well-chosen clinical vignettes, which pay equal attention to uncovering and to supportive psychodynamic techniques, and which illustrate virtually every clinical situation discussed and every point of technique presented. The vignettes are brief, to the point, and instructive.
The text consists of thirty-one succinct and clearly written chapters organized into seven sections. Each chapter begins with highlighted “key concepts” to be discussed, and the subsequent text discusses each of these in detail. Suggested activities at the end of each chapter (e.g., answering questions about a clinical vignette) invite the reader/trainee to consolidate the knowledge gained from having read the chapter by assuming an active role in the learning process. The authors do not assume that the reader/trainee has any working knowledge of psychodynamic psychotherapy. All terms are clearly and fully defined as they emerge in the text, and technical terms are not used until they have been fully discussed and