Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Developments in Theory, Technique, and Training: By Franz Alexander, M.D. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1956. 299 pp.

In his latest book, dedicated to the memory of Freud, Alexander presents his own and related psychoanalytic contributions of the last two decades. The form, however, is that of a comprehensive text, and the content ranges, with varying degrees of thoroughness, over the whole field, historical and current, suggested by the title. The book is, in general, characterized by its conspicuously modest interpretations of the author's own contributions, its measured attitude toward past criticisms, and its elaborate and considered arguments in defense of certain of the author's ideas. However, unless the process of attenuation, circumspection, and conservative reservation is to be construed as tantamount to depriving the proposals of mutative significance, one must deal in certain important references with essentially the same debatable issues which have consumed much space and time in the past.

While Alexander's keen and pervasive awareness of the limitations (and the failures) of the traditional psychoanalytic method is no doubt founded on certain observed clinical occurrences, one must recognize that his over-all orientation toward the method and its potentialities, whatever the origin of this orientation, is a special one. He appears to see it as one of many possible applications of psychoanalytic knowledge, one which has acquired a certain traditional prestige, rather than as a painstakingly forged instrument of unique power and rationale, deeply related to every known element in the body of science which he unreservedly esteems. The latter relationship he appears to value for its historical contribution; the research interest he criticizes as a current motivation vitiating therapeutic effectiveness. (If Ferenczi and Rank did have a basis for this criticism at the time of their monograph, one wonders how many analysts would agree that Alexander has reason for postulating this as an interfering motive in the therapeutic work of competent contemporaries.) In any cas