Psychoanalysis and Behavior Therapy. By Paul L. Wachtel. New York:  Basic Books, 1977.

Paul Wachtel challenges the commonly held assumption that psychoanalysis and behaviorism are fundamentally irreconcilable models of personality and treatment. Wachtel points out the significant but seldom acknowledged commonalities between the two approaches; and he presents their important differences as valuable and complementary viewpoints on how to understand and treat maladaptive life patterns, rather than as a reflection of basic incompatibility.

The first chapters provide an exposition of the basic features of psychodynamic and behavioral thought. Wachtel reviews and makes fresh observations on the work of Freud, Sullivan, Dollard & Miller, Wolpe and the social learning theorists. Wachtel integrates the critical role of childhood in development with the behavioral point of view and proposes that these early events must be confirmed by a complex set of feed-back mechanisms which require the cooperation of other people and events. In his theory of treatment he presents an active-intervention psychodynamic perspective which combines a number of seemingly diverse approaches.