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This volume grew out of a series of three seminar sessions at successive annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association. It
is a welcome, timely addition to the literature on the psychotherapy of schizophrenia. Like most, if not all, multi-authored books, it varies in style and level of sophistication. The latter is rather intentional, however, as stated in the preface. On the whole, the authors' aim is to help the beginner, though without ignoring technical and psychodynamic points of interest to the more experienced therapist. Overall, it is successful in that it covers most of the salient issues involved in therapy with schizophrenics and seriously borderline patients, in readable, although sometimes a bit dogmatic, language. The most successful chapters are those by Stone, especially his first three (Chapters 2 to 4).
The first chapter, by the late Silvano Arieti, is possibly the weakest in the volume. It contains nothing different from the contents of his earlier publications. He repeats his assertion that he found only 25% of the mothers of schizophrenics to conform to the picture of the "schizophrenogenic mother," a "picture" which is now only of historical interest. It is generally recognized now that the mother and the child do not live in isolation, not even when there is a single mother. The mothers we studied had spouses, most of whom were disturbed or at least were compliant with their wives' bizarre domination of the family atmosphere. The reverse was often true as well, with wives submitting to very disturbed husbands.1 Arieti's advice to meet with parents to prepare them for their child's return to live with them is sound, but it cannot be accomplished in a single interview. Nevertheless, Arieti has been a prophet in this regard. He may well have stimulated the family education programs and family treatments that are current in the post-hospital care of schizophrenic patients.2
I find Arieti's claim that there are "untreatable