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In writing this book Drs. Alexander and French have had the assistance of nine other collaborators and they form a unitary team with an identical outlook. It may be surmised that Dr. Alexander, who has written the larger part of the book himself,
has supplied the main driving spirit of the team, since it has been known for some time that he has organized in his Clinic a group of fellow-workers imbued with the ideas promulgated. Together they have produced a very stimulating book. It could be particularly useful in seminars where students could be asked to produce their reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with various parts of it.
To describe psycho-analytic technique is such a complicated and difficult task that few experienced psycho-analysts have ventured to attempt it. In this book, with its misleading title, the authors have got round the difficulty by describing something other than the technique of psycho-analysis. Instead they describe various other useful methods of treatment, and their justification for the title of the book is that in their opinion any method of treatment informed by psycho-dynamic principles deserves to be called psycho-analytic. This broad, if inaccurate, conception characterizes the work of their Institute, which we in England might well describe as that of the early Tavistock Clinic much improved.
The main contention of the book is that 'psycho-analytic' work needs to be much more flexible than the authors think it is. Postulating an unreal rigidity and narrowness in what they call 'traditional', 'orthodox' or 'standard' psycho-analysis they gaily tilt at a number of windmills in a way that would be laudable were it necessary. Thus inspired their zeal carries them past the mark and they rush on in full flight beyond it.
It is the authors' main thesis, in itself an undeniable one, that every case should be judged on its merits and a free choice exercised in the form of treatment and method of approach adopted. But it is startli