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In the third edition of his well known work The Technique of Psychotherapy, Dr. Lewis R. Wolberg has attempted to be comprehensive in his coverage of the many forms of psychotherapy, both traditional and new, while also providing a detailed introduction into technique. Particularly emphasized is the technique of analytic psychotherapy. The book is long (over 1300 pages in two volumes), has more than 60 chapters and over 3000 references. As an introduction, it succeeds. It is readable, filled with rich clinical examples (many of which are annotated verbatim transcripts), and yet provides a forum to disscuss many of the theoretical approaches to psychotherapy. The book does not, however, provide a new clinical or theoretical syntheses for the experienced clinician.
One important strength of the book is that Dr. Wolberg begins by asking some crucial and timely questions for any practitioner of psychotherapy. These include: What is psychotherapy? He attempts a definition. Is the medical model still valid? He seems to feel it is. What about the veritable supermarket of therapies now being practiced? How is one to choose a form of therapy when “empirical studies have shed little light on how treatment processes operate and when they are most effective.” He helps the reader identify with the average person who he feels is in a hopeless quandary when it comes to finding the answers to the best form of psychotherapy.
With so many different types of therapy, why do published statistical data show no form of treatment better than any other? He asks why a person who has not responded to years of skillful psychoanalysis gets better with only a few sessions with a “untutored charlatan”? Why do some people get better without any therapy at all? What are the meanings and causes of spontaneous resolution of emotional problems? Dr. Wolberg asks these provocative questions and more. It is to his book's credit that he does, for any person doing psychotherapy should be asking him/herself