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The last book (Psychosocial Nursing) about the unique work of the Cassel Hospital
appeared twenty years ago. So this new book which focuses particularly on the treatment of families and adolescents is a long awaited publication. It has been unfortunate that in recent years very little has been published from the Cassel, where so many consultant psychotherapists and nurses have trained. The application of psychoanalytic theory to inpatient work and its combination with psychosocial nursing have enriched the training of many psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, who can use their institutional experience from the hospital very fruitfully in other institutional settings in the NHS.
The book aims to illustrate the Cassel's clinical approach and hopes that this may be relevant to mental health professionals in other settings. Theoretical issues pertaining to inpatient psychotherapy, such as the nature of the transference, problems of regression and the role of the social structure, are addressed in several of the papers.
The book is edited by the Consultant and Nursing Officer of the families and adolescent unit, and the Principal Child Psychotherapist, illustrating the three professional groups that work together in the hospital. It is divided into three sections - theory, clinical work, theoretical considerations of the therapeutic community. There is a lengthy introduction summarising the aims and contents of the book, and this is repeated to some extent in the concluding chapter.
The papers are all of interest, although variable in their clarity and quality. There is some degree of repetition, perhaps inevitable in such a collection of papers. Overall the book gives a fairly comprehensive account of the current clinical work with families (who have the main focus in the book) and adolescents who are admitted to the hospital in a state of breakdown.
In the first three papers (Kennedy, Wilson, Muir) the focus of the clinical work on the everyday activities of the patients