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This 270-page book is a valuable contribution to the study and understanding of the psychotherapeutic process. It has been quite appropriately included in Critical Issues in Psychiatry, An Educational Series for Residents and Clinicians (edited by Sherwyn M. Woods, M.D., Ph.D.).
The author introduces his method of configurational analysis, which is primarily a systematic approach to the description and understanding of psychopathological states as they exist prior to treatment and as they change during and following treatment.
This book would have been a lot more difficult to read were it not for the fact that the author has interspersed the carefully thought-out theoretical concepts with ample clinical material and examples. He is successful in introducing an orderly and clear means of analyzing this most chaos-ridden area without doing violence to the complexity of the issues involved by either embracing one theoretical system or falling into the ubiquitous dangers of reductionism and oversimplification. The conceptual approach reflects, furthermore, a laudable open-mindedness to, and willingness to encompass, the newer conceptual contributions of object relations and studies of the self. Needless to say, this is not a simple task.
Configurational analysis includes a study of psychopathological states in three important dimensions: (a) states and state cycles, dealing with recurrent patterns of experience and behavior, both verbal and nonverbal; (b) self-images and relationship models addressing the description of and changes in self- and object-images and role relationships; (c) information processing, including ideas, emotions and controls, the last being the author's term for the more commonly used term, “defenses.”
The theoretical assumptions underlying the use of these terms and parameters are, in each case, described and compared with the literature concerned with these concepts. The author makes use of diagrams to help clarify transitional shifts between psycho