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Robert Wallerstein's Forty-Two Lives in Treatment. A Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy is the final account of the 30-year (1954–1985) psychotherapy research project conducted at the Menninger Foundation. The last of a series of books about this project (Kernberg, 1972); (Voth & Orth, 1973); (Horowitz, 1974); (Applebaum, 1977), Forty-Two Lives is formidably comprehensive (784 pages), encompassing not only a huge amount of clinical data but also Wallerstein's own painstaking consideration of process and outcome issues. It may not be an exaggeration to say that the clinical portions of the book 'read like a novel', for it should be noted that the comprehensive case summaries (Wallerstein had several hundred typescript pages available for each of the 42 patients) enliven this report in an altogether unique way. Here is a research report to which serious readers can devote themselves entirely.
Before I address the yield of this massive research effort, a few preliminary remarks on the study population and setting are in order. Subjects were selected from the Menninger Foundation waiting list for psychoanalysis and psychotherapy on a random basis, albeit with certain exclusion criteria. It was intended that the sample be evenly divided between men and women and between those in analysis and those in psychotherapy. This goal was approximated, with 22 patients recommended for analysis (12 women and 10 men) and 20 for psychotherapy (9 women and 11 men). Subjects ranged from 17 to 50 years of age, with a mean of 31 (33 for the men and 30 for the women). Individuals undergoing concomitant group