The Practice of Conjoint Therapy. By Louis Ormont and Herbert Strean. New York:  Human Sciences Press, 1978.  231 pp.

The authors have looked back over twenty years of working together as conjoint therapists and have produced a really excellent exposition of this mode of psychoanalytic therapy in which the patient is treated concurrently in individual and group analysis by two different therapists who compare notes on a regular basis. Conjoint therapy is a refinement of the more usual “combined therapy” in which the patient is treated individually and in group by the same therapist. The authors would heartily agree with the notion that combined therapy offers the patient the best of both types of experience, individual and group. In combined therapy the group provides the patient with a laboratory in which he is usually quickly confronted with his problems in relationships, motivating him to work on them in depth in his individual hour. Improvements in his ego functioning can then be taken back to the group and tested out. The authors' argument is that it is even better if the individual analyst and the group analyst are not the same person but two different therapists who work in close consultation. One advantage claimed is that having two therapists helps the patient experience the dynamics of the parental triangle. Many examples are presented by the authors of patients who have completely different transference feelings for the two therapists and evoke completely