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Dr Courtenay is one of 14 general practitioners working in the Family Planning Association's marital problems clinics who, in a seminar under Dr Balint's leadership, tested a
technique of brief psychotherapy. The technique was designed I, to ‘relieve psycho-sexual disorders’ and 2, to ‘be applicable by doctors who were not psychiatrists’. Thirty-four cases were brought for discussion during the research period of which 22 were accepted for ‘focal’ therapy and a selection of these is presented in full with an account of the exchanges between treating doctor and the rest of the seminar to show how diagnosis was arrived at, predictions made and subsequent success or failure evaluated. The basic theory, bibliography and research methods were essentially those used by the psychoanalysts in their focal therapy workshop, and reported by Dr Malan in his Study of brief psychotherapy (reviewed in this Journal, July, 1964).
Despite important differences in training and technique (e.g. the G.P.s continued to conduct physical examinations) the statistically analysed findings as to patients' suitability for brief psychotherapy support Dr Malan's conclusions, including his rediscovery that ‘prognosis is best when there is a capacity on the part of both patient and therapist to become deeply involved’.
More specifically this book sets out to demonstrate ‘a truly psychosomatic approach’ to the problems of sexual discord in marriage. The setting, firmly centred on the genital-sexual function, was seen to provide the researchers with special opportunities for maintaining a proper balance between the emphasis placed on psychological and on bodily process. But the problem of finding ‘an acceptable examination of male genitals that will yield reliable data’ concerning the man's phantasies and emotions centred on these organs was not solved.
It is Dr Courtenay's misfortune that the areas in which his book would be of technical interest to analysts have all been more adequately covered by t