The Therapeutic Alliance, Workshop Series of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Monograph Nine: Edited by Steven T. Levy,  International Universities Press, Madison, Ct,  122 Pp.

This Concise, 122-Page Collection Of Articles prominent, fundamentally traditional psychoanalysts presents for the reader a very rich collection of clinical and theoretical wisdom organized around the subject of the therapeutic alliance. I must confess that I had only modest expectations upon starting this book because I had not previously considered the therapeutic alliance to be a subject of much conflict or controversy. It had never occurred to me, as it clearly does to Sander Abend, the author of the first article, to question the very validity of the concept of the alliance. For me and many of my colleagues, teachers, and supervisors, the therapeutic alliance has been a mainstay of clinical work—useful and historically important, and an invaluable tool for dealing with the complexities of the transferential and non-transferential elements of the patient-analyst relationship.

Unquestioning acceptance of this established (or so I thought) concept is clearly not the intent of this volume. The five authors, two discussants, and the editor are to be commended for putting together a work of well-written, at times brilliant, and provocative psychoanalytic scholarship that any experienced analyst would do well to peruse.

Stephen Levy, the editor, introduces the subject by reviewing the historical origins of the therapeutic alliance and then listing the varied meanings that have evolved. “The alliance is a means of working together, a curative agent in itself, a myth with sicker patients, a result of treatment rather than a basis for it, the best predictor of therapeutic success, a monument to mutual humanity …. How can anyone not be interested in this concept for all seasons?” (pp. xi-xii).

Sander Abend's paper follows, a clear, masterful discussion and review of the history, development, and problematic aspects of the therapeutic alliance concept. His interest is in the larger question of discerning what enables analytic treatments to move forward. The “unobjectionable p