Outcomes of Psychoanalytic Treatment: Perspectives for Therapists and Researchers Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber and Mary Target (eds) London:  Whurr, 2002  339 pp., £29.50 Clinical Effectiveness in Psychotherapy and Mental Health: Strategies and Resources for Effective Clinical Governance Susan McPherson, Phil Richardson and Penny Leroux (eds) London:  Karnac, 2003  154 pp., £16. 99

Current concern in the Association of Child Psychotherapists with issues of evaluation, clinical effectiveness and outcome research makes the opportunity of reviewing these two books particularly timely. Though focused on work with adults they contain valuable information for child psychotherapists trying to get their heads around central issues.

Leuzinger-Bohleber and Target's book is based on a 3-day international conference held in Hamburg in 1999. The conference was particularly important because a major part of it was given over to presentations generated by the German Psychoanalytic Association's follow-up study of long-term effects of psychoanalytic treatment, the largest and most comprehensive European study to date. In a useful introductory chapter, the editors outline economic and social factors currently driving research into the effectiveness of psychoanalytic treatment. They point out that there is a tension between psychoanalytic researchers and clinicians, and that the research needs to reflect what is specific about psychoanalytic treatment. The chapter is well referenced and includes an interesting discussion of the pro and cons of qualitative and quantitative methods and the domains that they each map.

Thereafter the book is divided into four parts. Part I, ‘Long-term treatment in the context of contemporary discussions,’ is historical, philosophical and political. In an interesting, intelligent chapter, ‘What are the aims of psychoanalysis?’, Anna Ursula Dreher points to the complexity of defining treatment aims in psychoanalysis, showing how differences in what can be expected at termination have been affected historically by theoretical, technical and social factors. The question of what psychoanalysis is worth raises issues of value that cannot solely be explained in economic terms.

Robert Wallerstein, generally regarded as a pioneer in psychoanalytic research in the USA, outlines three generations of psychoanalytic research. According to Wallerst