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This short and readable book is written by a Consultant Pyschotherapist at the Warneford Hospital, Oxford, and Honorary Clinical Lecturer in the University there. He is a co-author of a book on 'Russia's Political Hospitals' (1977) which was awarded the Manfred S. Guttmacher Award in 1978 by the American Psychiatric Association, editor of 'An Introduction to the Psychotherapies' (1979), and joint editor with Paul Chodoff of 'Psychiatric Ethics' (1981). His latest book is written for the non-specialist general reader and student. It reviews the confusing range of psychotherapies available today in a serious fashion, from what is clearly an eclectic view. This has advantages and disadvantages.
Bloch is unashamedly a psychotherapist and not a psychoanalyst, and this means that he seriously underestimates and in some measure misrepresents the psychoanalytic viewpoint. On the other hand his detachment enables him to provide for psychoanalysts a brief but respectful view of the wider range of psychotherapies available today, supported by judicious references and mention of important research work, particularly in the U.S.A. My own feeling on reading it is that his earnest presentation of the multiplicity of approaches could promote the confusion which psychotherapy can induce in a beginner when denied a guiding map, such as that of systematic psychoanalytic theory.
The seven chapters are entitled What is Psychotherapy? The Patient, The Therapist, Schools of Psychotherapy, The Group Approach, Research in Psychotherapy, and An Ethical Dimension. I shall just mention a few points about each chapter to give some flavour of their strengths and weaknesses.
In 'What is Psychotherapy?' he is at his best in his description of supportive psychotherapy, where the writing becomes very clear and helpful. Bloch makes good use of Jerome Frank's 'non-specific factors', i.e. those which are common to all forms of psychotherapy, analytic and non-analytic. Frank is obviously a major