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The ten authors know each other's way of working and have been associated with the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute, the Tavistock Clinic and the British Psycho-Analytical Society. A partial exception is Ruth Skrine, a retired GP who has been chairman of the Institute of Psychosexual Medicine. To make best use of this book requires a working knowledge of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. A shared psychotherapeutic focus is a close attention to the patient's emotional relationship with the therapists and the therapist's emotional response to their patients. This transference-countertransference of thoughts and feelings is taken as being present from the beginning of the encounter. To be emotionally involved with the patient while at the same time observing and reflecting with a part of our mind, taking up a ‘third position’ (Britton, 1989), helps understand the nature of the marriage. This reflection continues after the sessions when we try to understand our own unconscious thoughts and feelings. The exposition is not just dry theory as all the chapters present vivid and instructive clinical descriptions which illustrate how the therapy is applied to make sense of a marriage and to convey this understanding to patients.
As the authors use similar psychoanalytic theories in their writing there is an inherent consistency and an agreeable absence of contentious argument in the book, unusual in a multi-author book.
The main aim of the book is to describe, discuss and evaluate brief marital treatment in various settings. The reviewer enjoyed this excellent book and can recommend it to all who work, or intend to work, with couples, especially in time-limited settings. The editor provides a detailed introduction. To anyone with access to his introduction this review is superfluous.
In Chapter 1, Mary Morgan focuses on initial consultations and suggests that the therapist couple needs to hold a ‘couple state of mind’, and she links this idea with the capacity to take a ‘third po