Conflict and Compromise: Therapeutic Implications, edited by Scott Dowling, M.D.,  International Universities Press, Madison, CT, 1991,  238 pp. Reviewed by James W. Barron, Ph.D.

Conflict and Compromise: Therapeutic Implications is the seventh monograph of the distinguished Workshop Series of the American Psychoanalytic Association. In the tripartite architecture of the volume, the first section includes six contributing authors' theoretical and clinical chapters (Jacob A. Arlow, Dale Boesky, Robert L. Tyson, Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Ernest Kafka, and Martin S. Willick); the second section, the commentary of four discussants (Charles Brenner, Milton H. Bronstein, Frederick Vaquer, and Paul H. Ornstein); and the final section, the authors' responses. Scott Dowling describes his editorial intent:

[To] assist the reader in understanding the modern conceptualization of conflict and compromise formation and enable him or her both to recognize and be in a position to evaluate the clinical implications of that position as compared to self psychology and to the Bionian object relations approach. Neither the self psychological nor the Bionian position is presented in detail; rather, an effort has been made to present variations and clinical applications of conflict theory in some detail and allow the reader to participate in an intense dialogue between well-known, authoritative proponents of differing viewpoints [p. x].