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This volume consists of seventeen papers on the intervention of confrontation in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Since there is a scarcity of meaningful in-depth psychoanalytic studies of any of our basic technical measures and their validation, an undertaking of this kind is most welcome. Further, since there is still a need to delineate the specific indications, limitations, and risks of non-interpretive interventions in psychotherapy and especially in psychoanalysis, Adler and Myerson's book is a positive step in this direction. Thus, it may serve as a valuable tool for teachers of these techniques and also provide an opportunity for more experienced psychoanalysts to reconsider their attitudes toward the uses of confrontations in their daily work. As the papers in this book indicate, there is considerable diversity in this regard, and the fresh perspectives that they stimulate in the reader are helpful.
The papers have a wide range of style, originality, clarity, soundness, and subject matter. The authors explore the definition, meanings, and uses of confrontation in the usual therapy and analytic practices and focus on their application to disturbances in the therapeutic alliance, therapeutic emergencies and impasses, persistent resistances, and unmodified denials of inner and outer reality. The frequent use of such intervention with borderline and psychotic