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It has been a rare pleasure to review this splendid and unique book by a seasoned psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, a colleague and friend of many years. It should be read by experts practicing psychotherapy, students learning how to do it, and present or prospective patients as well. The bulk of the book consists of case histories filled with keen observations and descriptions of, and lessons learned from, a variety of characters and personalities. The book is highly readable and gripping, with a minimum of technical terms. It is enlivened by literary references and poetic metaphors, and - above all - by the author’s bravely baring his soul to his patients in a process he calls interpersonal psychotherapy. The result of this therapy is personal change, where both interlocutors emerge as changed.
The book is a revolutionary challenge to a long tradition inaugurated by Freud in 1912 and continued by generations of followers:
Young and eager psychoanalysts will no doubt be tempted to bring their own individuality freely into the discussion … to afford the patient a glimpse of his own mental defects and conflicts and by giving them intimate information about his own life … I have no hesitation in, therefore, in condemning this kind of technique as incorrect. The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him. (p. 118)
Dr. Friedberg’s vision of the treatment situation is unhesitatingly different:
an emotional connection, … the psychotherapist is a healer … there is no disentangling that patient and the therapist. (p. 1)
[For the patient] my listening is cathartic … healing in itself … the ear of the therapist is that of a friend. (p. 13)
I also maintain a dual focus that aligns the patient’s story with my own experience … When I respond to a patient I try to say something that is true from my own experience. (p. 15)
The paradox of therapy is that while healers need to seem competent, a genuine display of empathy pr