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This is an interesting and clinically impressive account of short-term family and couple therapy. The description of the clinical sessions is convincing, and the family comes to life in the account in a way which suggests that the therapists both liked and helped them. In addition, the therapists are not afraid to use everyday descriptions of the family's behaviour and interaction, a fact which again brings a vividness to their account and allows those of a non-psychoanalytic background to appreciate what was being done.
Oddly, there are some rather imprecise aspects to the detailed information given: father is ‘probably’ in his early 50s, and mother ‘of a similar age’, while the number of sessions of therapy is never clearly stated, although we can infer from internal evidence that it was probably three sessions of family therapy, three sessions of couple therapy and one final session of family therapy. This then was essentially a brief course of therapy, and none the worse for that, but in this respect it contrasts with a great deal of what is commonly believed about psychodynamic couple and family therapy. The usual assumption is that this type of therapy continues for many sessions (Daniell 1985; Clulow 1985). Many analysts would consider a resolution within six sessions to represent either a first stage of therapy, to be followed by the inevitable relapse into depression and need for further therapy, or a ‘flight into health’. There are certainly some forms of ‘brief’ dynamic therapy, but in these one might expect to find some characteristic techniques, such as dealing with issues of termination from the beginning or stressing transference throughout, and they did not seem to have been used; so in many ways it is distinct from the accepted forms of psychoanalytic family therapy.
On the other hand, systemic or cognitive behavioural therapists would applaud the brevity of the therapy and seek for the worthwhile changes which may have taken place in the short time-s