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SHORT-TERM PSYCHOTHERAPY. Edited by Lewis R. Wolberg, M.D. New York: Grune & Stratton, Inc., 1965. 348 pp.
These two books taken together complement each other; they discuss the various techniques of psychotherapy. Hollender deliberately restricts himself to describing the process of long-term reconstructive psychotherapy. Wolberg's book is taken from a series of seminars given by each of its contributors at the Post Graduate Center for Mental Health on various aspects of brief psychotherapy, an interest stimulated by the pressure of increasing numbers of patients for whom reconstructive psychotherapy is either unavailable, inappropriate, or contraindicated.
Hollender writes in an easily readable, informal style and attempts to discuss the entire subject from basic principles and the selection of patients, to the beginning, middle, and terminal phases of therapy. Each of Wolberg's contributors addresses himself to the same circumscribed subject matter from his personal experience so that there is considerable overlap, variation in style and quality, and difference in theoretical point of view.
Hollender's book is in many ways highly idiosyncratic, at times dogmatic, and his treatment of various subjects is spotty and random. This is particularly true in the first two chapters on Basic Considerations, and Preconceptions and Principles; and his sections on regression, transference, and dream interpretation in no