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The author of this book has undertaken an unpopular task. He was told by his colleagues and mentors that he would not be publishing a best seller. Furthermore, the discovery that many psychotherapists suffer from psychopathology, often severe psychopathology, is not an entirely new one. He seems to have embarked on a gloomy task without any clear-cut solutions or feasible hopes that the situation will improve.
It is even possible that this book will make matters worse by helping detractors of the psychotherapeutic approach justify their denigration of the intrapsychic frame of reference. From their viewpoint, psychotherapists have deluded themselves about the etiology of emotional disturbances, which is purely biological; and now it has been shown that they are generally deluded in their personal orientation. As the author notes, a small mess is treating a big mess, but the whole interaction becomes a chaotic mess because therapists are emotionally unstable and scientifically incompetent.
Sussman, however, decided to examine, scientifically, data that have, for the most part, been impressionistically gathered. He also explores therapists' motivations for choosing their profession and does so in terms of drives, self, and object relationships. He extensively examines the literature and presents some rather interesting statistical findings. For example, the rate of suicide among psychiatric residents is considerably higher than that of the general public and physicians in other specialties. Being unwilling to lump therapists into one general category, he distinguishes among psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers. He did, however, find that 15-40% of psychotherapists were dissatisfied with their personal treatment experiences.