Teaching Psychodynamic Principles to Mental Health Professionals: Handbook of Psychodynamic Approaches to Psychopathology. Edited by Patrick Luyten, Linda C. Mayes, Peter Fonagy, Mary Target, and Sidney J. Blatt. New York:  Guilford Press, 2015,  xiv + 578 pp., $85.00. The Psychiatric Interview in Clinical Practice. By Roger A. MacKinnon, Robert Michels, and Peter J. Buckley. 3rd rev. ed. Washington, DC:  American Psychiatric Publishing, 2016,  xvi + 707 pp., $79.00.

In the contemporary mental health care scene, too many psychiatric leaders join the insurance industry in debunking psychodynamic approaches to treatment, despite many studies of their effectiveness (Wampold 2001: Hoffman 2009, 2015a,b; Levy et al. 2014). The two books under review here are a welcome antidote to these naysayers (see Coyne 2012). The volume by Luyten, Mayes, Fonagy, Target, and the late Sidney Blatt addresses the empirical foundations of psychodynamic approaches; the volume by MacKinnon, Michels, and Buckley, the third edition of a volume first published in 1971 and updated in 2006, stresses the value of the dialogue between patient and clinician. The chapters in the first volume are written by a range of authors, all of them notable contributors to the psychodynamic empirical literature; the second includes chapters by three contributors in addition to the principal authors. The Handbook stresses empirical approaches to theoretical and clinical issues, while the Psychiatric Interview, much more practically oriented, will be especially helpful to beginners learning to approach patients.

Both volumes are quite long and, like most textbooks, are not meant to be read in a few sittings. Rather, they are best utilized as introductory and source material when learning about (or teaching) particular topics.