The Anatomy of Psychotherapy: Lawrence Friedman,  The Analytic Press, Hillsdale, N.J., 1988,  600 pp.

This oddly titled book is erudite, difficult, long, provocative, and at times dogmatic or idiosyncratic, yet it merits careful study and respectful review. A substantial portion of the text is made up of articles by the author that have been reprinted from various publications. The style of writing at times is quite turgid, and the author has an unfortunate proclivity for parenthetical statements. A major complication for the reader is that this intellectual book really contains several books placed into one. There is a book that deals with everyday problems in the practice of psychotherapy and issues of supervision. Another book discusses the origin and role of theory in the practice of psychotherapy. There is a book on the philosophy of science, with discussions of Cassirer, Ryle, Kuhn, and others. An additional book reviews and criticizes innumerable theories of mentation and therapy by such luminaries as Hartmann, George Klein, Gill, Schafer, and Kohut, and also related theories, especially of Piaget, as well as Peterfreund's information-processing theory, Levenson's perspectivism, Gendlin's vitalism, and what the author considers to be phenomeno-logical theory. There is yet another book that deals with the formal philosophy and epistemology of theories of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, although not at great length.

One wonders for what audience of readers this book is intended. Beginners in the field will find themselves hopelessly ensconced in a myriad of technical and theoretical details. It is doubtful that many readers of an even more sophisticated training will be familiar with all the aspects of what the author is talking about. A substantial group of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists will be quite offended by his approach, which is essentially an application of the postmodern philosophical position of Richard Rorty, or perhaps even the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida, to psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic theories. As the book moves along