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Murray Jackson's forty years as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist in the National Health Service, mostly at the foremost psychiatric teaching hospital in the United Kingdom, should add extra weight to the persuasiveness of this interesting book. His co-author Paul Williams, one of the founders of S.A.N.E. (Schizophrenia — a National Emergency) worked as an anthropologist observer on the ward and provided taped material and indeed the original inspiration for the book, which argues for a central place for psychodynamic understanding in the organization of the treatment of psychotic patients, in the planning of treatment, and if possible in the actual treatment as one of the weapons in the modern armamentarium.
Because of its lucidity and its emphatic approach to the patients concerned, this book provides vivid reading. Its backbone consists of the verbatim interviews by Murray Jackson, supplemented by the team discussions about how to help the patient and by the necessary background and follow-up information. Six cases presented in this way account for six of the eight chapters.
The interviews with these psychotic patients should be of great interest to all therapists, inexperienced and experienced alike. They afford a rarely available insight into the style and interpretative approach of an experienced Kleinian analyst, given their particular setting and (partly exploratory, partly teaching) purpose. We are refreshed by his straightforward and relatively disinterested wish to understand where the patient is presently at