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That good things come in small packages is true indeed of this slim volume containing the cumulated clinical thinking of a distinguished, classically trained psychoanalyst. Those familiar with Paul Graves Myerson's previously published papers will know the subtlety of his focus on the analytic process—in his language, on the “transactions” that take place within the analytic field—and of his continuing efforts to delineate these phenomena further. Of late, his attention has increasingly turned to the problems and possibilities of analyzing patients for whom classical technique has proved disappointing. The reader will not be surprised that these are patients with significant “narcissistic” psychopathology, patients described in other vocabularies as “schizoid” or as suffering “disorders of the self.” Although Myerson is most at home within the tradition of his training and views other approaches as departures from this customary baseline, this work is not an exposition on the relative merits of the classical position over others. On the contrary, it is a probing examination of alternative psychoanalytic perspectives where those that happen to be more congenial to him are not apposite. Parenthetically, I believe it is fair to say that the author does not limit his definition of psychoanalysis exclusively to aims and techniques as outlined by Freud.
Myerson, Emeritus professor of Psychiatry at Tufts Medical School, and Training and Supervising analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, emerges from these pages as a humane, balanced, and unprejudiced commentator on the complexities of psychoanalytic treatment. He chooses to illustrate his ideas through the study of theoretical and clinical material drawn from the analytic literature rather than predominantly from his own files. This broadens the work and gives it a scope and variety that