For the psychoanalytic therapist, Emmy Gut's book provides a timely antidote to several contemporary toxins: managed-care consultants who “authorize” six visits to treat depression; lawsuits that call it malpractice to withhold antidepressants; and the tendency among therapists to deal with these trends by denial. The author seems to welcome the quick-fix advocate with open arms, acknowledging that, yes, we can and often must treat depression as an illness to be gotten over as soon as possible; but then she adds that in many cases to do so is to deprive the patient of a chance to engage in “the slow, laborious, painful, but more truly remedial process…” (p. 218) of psychoanalytic treatment.

Gut's main argument is ingenious: depression, she tells us, is not an illness at all, but a normal human response when our