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The Innsbruck Clinic of Psychotherapy and the Depth Psychology Study Group in Vienna were founded by Dr Igor A. Caruso, and this book, said to be highly valued by the late Fr Victor White, may be regarded as a mature statement of Caruso's position. His psychotherapy seems to be based upon Christian assumptions and upon the necessity for the analyst to appreciate what is called ‘the hierarchy of true values’ (ix ff.). It attempts a wide-ranging synthesis of some of the schools of dynamic psychology, though Klein is not mentioned, together with existential psychotherapy. Caruso calls his system ‘personalist depth-psychology’. He attempts definition by contrasting it with other schools, but at a relatively high level of abstraction. An impression is formed, difficult to substantiate and yet persistent, that he is attacking ‘men of straw’ when assailing the systems of others. Comparing notes or working on common projects with analysts of other schools is not alluded to by him, and it may be that it is the absence of this experience which makes this impression a justifiable one.
Caruso requires the analyst to work with a conscious set of values, ‘biological’ and ‘spiritual’, functioning in a whole person, together with a clear attitude towards the nature and status of the whole person in relation to inner and outer reality (p. ). In particular he stresses that the analyst should be enabled by his own analysis to take on the responsibility of uncovering both the ‘negative’ (pp. 28-60) and the ‘positive’ (pp. 61-98) aspects of the patient's neurosis. Caruso thinks that the negative aspects centre on unacknowledged existential guilt. The analyst's responsibility is to demonstrate where the real guilt lies,