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Dr. Stierlin is obviously erudite and cognizant of philosophy and literature. He has expended great effort in writing a book in which he elucidates the thesis that conflict and its resolution are central to human growth and adaptation, and to some methods by which we learn and organize our knowledge. Nevertheless, Conflict and
Resolution is difficult and disappointing. Although the author is a psychoanalyst, he writes in the style of a Teutonic philosopher, using categorical statements sometimes of unusual complexity, esoteric arguments, and what appear to be idiosyncratic interpretations of others' work. While the bibliography is extensive the reader who is not well acquainted with the psychoanalytic literature would be hard pressed to check Dr. Stierlin's understanding of others' contributions. For example, Melanie Klein's name appears once in the book without specific citation, but four of her books are listed. Again, four of Mahler's articles are included in the bibliography but one never becomes certain how her formulations have influenced Stierlin's conceptualizations. Likewise, no mention is made of authors whose works are included among the references.
One struggles through this formidable book, always hoping to find something new and expecting that ultimately a psychoanalytic or at least a psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapeutic approach for the treatment of schizophrenia will be presented. But the search is in vain. Instead psychoanalytic and other hypotheses are restated within a framework of what appears to be Hegelian dialectic. Thus we learn that human development depends upon the successive resolution of five phase-specific antithetical situations or forces: moment vs. duration, difference vs. sameness, gratification vs. frustration, stimulation vs. stabilization, and closeness vs. distance. The schizophrenogenic mother fails to help her child resolve the five forces adaptively, both within himself and between himself and the outer