In Theaters of the Body, Joyce McDougall examines psychosomatic phenomena, using the metaphor, developed so successfully in her previous works, of the inner world as theater. She conceives of the individual psyche as a stage peopled by a multitude of voices, belonging to self- and object representations, reflecting past, important object relationships and derived from various levels of development. While some may take issue with her choice of metaphor, I find that it provides an ease of access to her clinical material that is rare among contemporary psychoanalytic authors. In this regard alone, I feel that McDougall makes an important contribution to our literature, as her clinical reports exemplify how to convey to one's readers an accessible and convincing sense of the analytic encounter.

Of even greater importance, however, are the formulations she