Confidentiality: Ethical Perspectives and Clinical Dilemmas. Edited by Charles Levin, Allannah Furlong, and Mary Kay O'Neil. Hillsdale, NJ/ London:  The Analytic Press, 2003.  345 pp.

We live in an era of proliferating intrusions on the privacy of personal information by the government, insurance companies, and other commercial enterprises. They utilize increasingly sophisticated devices for recording, storing, and transmitting data. In addition, electronic marauders, known as hackers, pride themselves on obtaining supposedly secure information. A counterforce to these intrusions is the increased attention to issues of privacy and confidentiality by professionals, both as individuals and through organizations. Certainly, psychoanalysts as well as other practitioners of psychotherapy have a large stake in maintaining the confidentiality of the information conveyed to them in the course of their work.

In recent years, several international panels and publications, including the book being reviewed, have addressed this topic. Confidentiality: Ethical Perspectives and Clinical Dilemmas is a compilation of twenty-one papers covering many aspects of confidentiality. In addition, the editors have provided a brief introduction, highlighting the main ideas, for each paper. Three-quarters of the papers were written by presenters at the International Psychoanalytical