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This book is a welcome addition to the growing field of object relations family therapy. Unlike most other current approaches in family therapy that reject the insights of psychoanalysis, object relations family therapy places emphasis on developmental issues, the unconscious, the effect of the past on current events, and the curative effects of insight. Most other approaches in family therapy look at the patients as if they were black boxes devoid of any past history or intrapsychic dynamics and focus only on current systems of communication, power structure, and feedback. These other systemic approaches also hold the illusion that the therapist is an outside objective observer, who can manipulate and control the family interaction. In contrast to this, object relations family therapy focuses on the multiple types of transferences by the family as well as the therapist's countertransference. Here the subjective responses of the therapist become an important part of the therapeutic process. Object relations family therapy recognizes how the therapist is affected by the family, and in turn affects the family.
This book represents a collection of old and new papers by members of the Psychoanalytic Family Therapy Training Program of the Washington School of Psychiatry and their closest associates. This program is a fine example of an eclectic group of analysts with divergent theoretical bases, ranging from drive theory, ego psychology, to object relations theorists such as Fairbairn and Winnicott, who have worked together constructively and tolerated individual differences. When I was last invited to participate in one of the annual conferences held each March in Washington, D.C., by this group on object relations family therapy, I encouraged the authors and Jill Scharff, the editor, to pursue their efforts to assemble this book of their collected works. I especially felt that the early journal articles by Roger Shapiro and John Zinner and their associates written in 19