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Quite the most important thing to decide about any learned book is, for whom is it written? Some sort of answer is obviously crucial for a reviewer who must come to a conclusion whether to recommend it, on what grounds and with what degree of conviction. In the case of Kenneth Lambert's book, having been the author's contemporary and as such exposed over 30 years to similar climatic influences has both advantages and disadvantages, but on the whole I think that the former outweigh the latter: although the first quick reading did not prove easy there was never any doubt about the recommendation I would arrive at.
The content and composition of this book reflect an up-to-date picture of what has become known in Jungian circles as the London view or variant of analytical psychology, of which Fordham is the chief exponent. This fifth volume of the Library of Analytical Psychology must be invaluable to all students at home as well as abroad. Practising analysts (who are or ought to be students, too) will find Lambert's book a useful reminder of how we got to our place and in what direction we may be going. At all events, every reader will be grateful to the author for the frankness with which he exposes his background and the derivation of his views. He has certainly stuck to Jung's idea when he considers the personality of the analyst as one of the most essential factors in the outcome of therapy. In fact, the first three chapters (out of nine) quite overtly, although not exclusively, refer to the analyst as the personal factor in analysis. In particular, Lambert (always generous in acknowledging his debt to his analyst and other colleagues), admits from the start cross-fertilisation by the Freud-Jung group, a private enterprise which has been a going concern since 1964. Thus two ways of analytical practice, which at one time had been regarded as incompatible and even inimical, have drawn very close together; so close that the reader may wonder at times whether the disti