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This is a book about psychotherapy, written essentially for members of the medical profession, from medical student to consultant. It is an attempt to convey information
to the audience about a range of approaches to patients with emotional problems, including psychoanalytic, systemic, group, behavioural and cognitive. It is also an effort to communicate to doctors the importance of understanding the role of emotional and psychological factors in their work.
The book, although divided into ten chapters, seems to be in two main sections. The first section is concerned with a psycho-analytic or psychodynamic approach to therapy and starts with an introduction to psychoanalytic theory and technique. These chapters are well written and interesting although there is some overlap. The impression conveyed by the writers of this section is that they have given considerable thought to the main purpose of the book. That is, how can medical doctors in different settings, having in general a model of diagnosis and cure, be enabled to take an interest in psychotherapy and what might they want to know, e.g. what is psychotherapy, why should they be interested in it, and how might it be integrated into their work? There is reference to the work of the Balints who have obviously made an important contribution to this way of thinking.
There are, in what I have called this first section, some guidelines for the assessment of the suitability of patients for psychodynamic psychotherapy which are very helpful, although I am not sure that there would be unanimous agreement about the view of two of the authors that patients with psychosomatic problems are unsuitable. While the initial chapters focus on the issue of patients requiring referral to a psychotherapist, the emphasis in some of the later chapters in this section tends to be more on the integration of psychotherapeutic skills into the doctor's own practice. This may require integration of models, medical and psychotherapeutic, as