Object Relations Theory and Clinical Psychoanalysis. By Otto Kernberg. New York:  Jason Aronson, 1976,  299 pp.

In his earlier book, Borderline Conditions and Pathological narcissism, Kernberg delineated the borderline syndromes in terms of their similarities to and differences from the psychoses and neuroses. He outlined a theory of object relations in developmental stages that accounted for these three major diagnostic categories and for the utilization of three corresponding therapeutic strategies. The current book serves to substantiate the earlier one. It presents the assumptions and conclusions of the theory in greater detail. It relates Kernberg's conslusions to those of his predecessors. It provides a more inclusive integration of the structural approach and contains more thoroughgoing matrix for the parallel relationship between strategy of treatment, level of pathology and stage of development of object relations. Major innovations appear in the last third of the book. Chapters seven and eight relate the nature of mature love and the ability to fall in love and to remain in love to their appropriate stages of object relations. Chapter nine investigates the activation of primitive internal objects in small group situations such as occur in a psychiatric hospital setting. Kernberg finds that the existence of a