Sally Box, Beta Copley, Jeanne Magagna and Erica Moustaki (Eds.). Psychotherapy with Families: An Analytic Approach.  Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. Paperback £5.50.

This book is a collection of papers by members of the Young People and their Families Workshop at the Tavistock Clinic. The authors come from various professions, social work, psychiatry, child and adult pyschotherapy and psychology. But the way they have worked together to evolve a consistent body of background theory and clinical practice is impressive. Their original professions are indistinguishable in the papers and the book is characterised by a consistency of approach unusual in a collection of twelve papers. At the same time, the book is not monolithic: the authors show that in their clinical work they also have space for their own thinking and to express their own individuality.

The Workshop seems to be a very valuable tool and support to the work being done in the psychotherapy of families by the authors. In addition to facilitating the development of a consistent body of theory and practice, it has clearly facilitated the clinical work with families by helping the therapists stand back from their work, review it with understanding colleagues and especially to sort out the complex tangles in the transference and countertransference which are unusually powerful in family treatment. (See, for example, Nonie Insall: Use of an ending to work with a family's difficulty about differentiation).