Perspectives On Psychopathology: A Review of “Part IV: Psychopathology” of the Handbook of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, edited by Marylou Lionells, John Fiscalini, Carola H. Mann, and Donnel B. Stern. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, 1995. xxx + 928 pp.

THIS HUGE, EXPENSIVE, AND AMBITIOUS book contains thirty-eight chapters from thirty-seven contributors, and over nine-hundred pages of text. The large double-column format allows for more than seven-hundred words per page, so in effect, it is even larger than the number of pages indicates. The editors’ fundamental goal was to provide a “reference text” for members of the mental-health field who want to deepen their understanding of interpersonal theory and practice.

Biographies of the founders of interpersonal psychoanalysis—Sullivan, Thompson, Fromm, Fromm-Reichman, Horney, and Ferenczi—are followed by a section on metapsychological positions regarding the self, cognition, anxiety, and gender; then come four chapters on development, ten on psychopathology, six more on the analytic process, and finally five chapters on special topics, including treatment of children, adolescents, cross-cultural issues, and supervision. This is a megabook, indicative of the maturity and power of the interpersonal model in the psychoanalytic world, and specifically of the influence of the William Alanson White Institute. (Only four of the thirty-seven contributors are not directly affiliated with White.)

This review focuses on the Handbook’s psychopathology section. Comprised of ten chapters, each on a separate diagnostic group, with eleven authors and 239 pages of text, it is a complete book of human psychopathology within the Handbook.

The chapters I place in three groups, based on what I consider to be the success of the chapter in relation to others within this section. So,