This is a book that really gets it because Mary-Joan Gerson has the ability to simultaneously shuttle between two worlds: she is equally adept at articulating couples therapy from both a systems world and a psychoanalytic world. Most important, she knows the values and limits of each approach. She implies that they need each other, as if she is trying to make a case for a “theoretical couple,” a virtual twosome, each helping the other to become stronger. This is no easy match to make.

Too often, these two worlds have looked askance at one another. A systems therapist considers psychoanalysts overly pessimistic in their emphasis on recurring and distorted elements in the couple's transference