The Anatomy of Change. A Menninger Foundation Report on Testing the Effects of Psychotherapy: By Stephen A. Appelbaum. New York and London: Plenum Press, 1977. 308 pp.

The Menninger Foundation in Topeka played a unique role in the development of psychiatry and psychoanalysis just before—and for about two decades after—World War II. It is still a very special place. Among other things, this arid geographic center of the United States became the mainspring of psychodynamic psychological testing and its extensive use by psychoanalysts and psychiatrists. It is a measure of the Foundation's achievement that one can only wish that the majority of the profession, including psychologists, would do as well today.

This volume on testing the effects of psychotherapy (by psychological testing and a rigorous examination of concepts and hypotheses) is part of the already variously reported Psychotherapy Research Project of about twenty years' duration. In the psychotherapy project, these tests were used mostly as control for clinical judgments. In all, twenty-six patients were tested at the initial evaluation, at termination, and again at follow-up. In essence, the test data were used for the formulation of intrapsychic variables, for the assessment of the therapeutic process, and for predictions of outcome and assessment of outcome. In order to do this, a rigorous examination of the concepts used was necessary.