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The continued publication of books on psychotherapy suggests that the ultimate vade mecum on psychotherapy has not yet appeared; nor, I quickly and, should such a volume ever see the light of day. However, an evident gap has been filled by the volume under review. Psychotherapy: The Analytic Approach (its title is tantalizingly ambiguous: is the stress meant to fall on “the” or on “analytic”?)
promptly identifies its audience and its orientation. In the first chapter, co-editor Aronson states that, for the authors, “the primary or overriding principle [in psychotherapy] is emotionally meaningful insight growing out of interpretation of unconscious intrapsychic conflict” (p. 2). Derived from a series of lectures given to a group of “mental health professionals” by members of the Long Island Psychoanalytic Society in 1990, the book is addressed to a “broad middle range” of readers, falling between those for whom the concepts presented may be unfamiliar, and those who may find them “a bit basic.”
The first ten chapters are indeed devoted to basic concepts: The Principles of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy; The Clinical Assessment of Patients; Structuring the Psychotherapeutic Situation; The Therapeutic Relationship and the Role of Transference; Empathy, Countertransference, and Other Emotional Reactions of the Therapist; The Nature of Interpretation; Extratransference Interpretations; Tactics in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy; Dreams and Acting Out; and Medication and Psychotherapy.
The subsequent chapters are more focused on specific issues: Women in Psychotherapy; Phobic Patients; Hysterical Patients and the Obsessive-Compulsive Personality; Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia; Depression; Borderline Patients; The Narcissistic Personality; The Treatment of Eating Disorders; Psychosomatic Disorders; and Psychotherapy with Older Adults.
Like most multi-authored books, this volume both benefits and suffers from that format. On one hand, the reader benefits from contributions by ex