Children with Conduct Disorders. A Psychotherapy Manual: By Paulina F. Kernberg and Saralea E. Chazan, et al. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1991. 306 pp.

With the recent trend toward increasing emphasis on the phenomenological, the descriptive, and the objective, it is refreshing as well as illuminating to find a topic such as conduct disorder in children articulated in the traditional language of psychoanalytic theory and dynamic psychiatry.

In an innovative psychotherapy manual, Paulina Kernberg, Saralea Chazan, and a group of their collaborators from Cornell Medical Center present the product of their clinical experience for the purpose of advancing teaching and research in psychotherapy with children. Drawing from ego psychology, object relations, attachment and learning theories, and the dynamics of group process, they present three models for the treatment of children with mild to moderate degrees of conduct disorder and oppositional behavior. The authors carefully depict the subjective experience of these children, who exhibit some capacity for guilt but who are compulsive and express themselves more through action than through words.

They note that these youngsters tend not to perceive the connections between motive, action, and consequence. Memory, attention,