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This attractive book by Eulàlia Torras de Beà, whose title means ‘Interview and diagnosis in psychiatry and psychoanalytic child psychology’, is a training publication solidly grounded in clinical practice. It comprises essentially a clinical study of the interview with children and adolescents, using an unequivocally psychoanalytic approach based on the thought and concepts of Freud, Klein and her followers, and a number of other important psychoanalytic thinkers. A detailed, readable and vivid account is given of a series of interviews as conducted and subsequently discussed in study groups specifically formed for the purpose. It would, in my opinion, be unfair to the author to attempt a summary of this wealth of clinical material, which, aptly presented and interpreted, demonstrates the importance and decisive value the author attributes to the interview as a guide to the (presumably psychiatric and/or psychological) treatment of mental disorders.
Let us simply mention the depth of observation and reflection revealed by some of the interviews which interested us most, for example the one entitled ‘Manuel, the closed window’, which illustrates and clearly examines regressive and phobic object relations vis-à-vis the new and the changes in the interaction between the parents and the child.
We would also single out the subtle interactions revealed by the three instructive interviews of ‘Mireia, dancing off the floor’, which allow us to glimpse something more of what the author defines as the functions of a diagnostic interview.
Chapter VI, ‘Rivers of blood’, which presents an interview with two children and their mother, shows us the study group at work, with its counter-transferences and identifications as they emerge in the various situations studied. There follow ‘Tristan, filling in his form’, ‘A mother, a girl’ (two interviews a week apart), ‘Lidia, at school’ and, finally, ‘Norma, that will not do’.
As already stated, much of the rich content of these clinical exa