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This is the first of two projected volumes which the author hopes will comprise a formal textbook on the technique and practice of psychoanalysis. For this purpose the book is carefully organized in numbered chapters, sections and subsections. References to the literature are both comprehensive and extensive. While contributions of major importance are noted in the body of the text, additional well-selected references are listed at the end of each chapter. In addition, a comprehensive bibliography is included at the end of the volume. The book is written in a lively and interesting style with minimal use of complex technical language or psychoanalytic jargon.
A feature of unusual interest is the rich and well-selected clinical material introduced by the author to illustrate each of his generalized statements. On the one hand, these examples may well add considerably to the educational experience of the student analyst. On the other, these illustrations, amplified by Dr Greenson's stimulating discussion, serve to illustrate some of the almost insuperable problems integral to the task he is attempting. They are highly personal, clearly revealing in almost every instance some aspect of the author's peculiarly individual approach. For this reason certain readers may have difficulty in comparing and contrasting their own responses in the analytic situation to those described by the author.
Dr Greenson has nevertheless done an invaluable service in presenting us with such a clear picture of how one psychoanalyst practises what he himself has described as an 'impossible' profession. He makes it abundantly clear that the analyst's responses as a real person, whether planned or unplanned, play a significant role during the course of every therapeutic analysis. Few analysts will question Dr Greenson's emphasis on the importance of analysing the unavoidable intrusion of certain reality factors during the course of every individual psychoanalysis. Differences of opini