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The author has written a lucid, accessible introduction to linguistics for the clinician, because he believes an understanding of language is a major part of the conceptual foundation required for clinical work. (Leavy has since made the same assertion specifically about psychoanalysis.1) The author's objective in this book is to introduce "new schemata to enable [psychotherapists] to attend to the stuff [they] work with, mainly words" (p. 23). He wishes to convince psychotherapists that a study of language "should be useful in making relevant distinctions that will help [them] to understand more accurately what they are hearing from their patients and to categorize more precisely what they are hearing into structures and organizations significant for their day-to-day work" (p. 23).
Two characteristics of the book are especially notable. One is that an astonishingly broad and varied range of topics, empirical research studies, and thinkers, not only in linguistics but in the philosophy of language and developmental psychology as well, are brought to the attention of the reader. The book and its references provide a comprehensive guide to further study in a number of