The Psychotherapy of the Elderly Self by Hyman L. Muslin New York:  Brunner/Mazel, 1992,  xviii + 220 pp., $27.50 How Psychiatrists Look at Aging edited by George H. Pollock Mental Health Library Series, Monograph 1. Madison, CT:  International Universities Press, 1992,  xiv + 244 pp., $32.50

The Psychotherapy of the Elderly Self is a book dedicated to a much neglected modality of help for the troubled elderly—psychotherapy. Awareness of the psychological and psychiatric difficulties of the elderly has been overshadowed and blurred by the devastation to the lives of patients and their family members created by the dementias. As a result, the elderly remain underserved

and undertreated by the various psychotherapeutic methods available. In many situations the medical community, as well as family members, neglect to help troubled elder patients to seek out appropriate treatment.

Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists have over the past 20 years increasingly striven to overcome misconceptions about the appropriateness of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy for the problems of the elderly. Acceptance has increased enormously, but more needs to be done, and Hyman Muslin, among others, has made his contribution in this volume.

Muslin is a proponent of self psychology, and The Psychotherapy of the Elderly Self is a contribution to self psychology, with emphasis on its application to the treatment of older patients. When Muslin refers to supportive or psychoanalytic psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, a reader who is a classical or contemporary mainstream psychoanalyst must shift gears to a different theoretical orientation. A background in the theoretical and clinical issues of self psychology is a helpful prerequisite to reading this book.

Muslin extends the concept of the “self” to the problems of the elderly, and in so doing he introduces the concept of the “elderly self.” In his early chapters (chapters 1 and 2), Muslin presents some defining characteristics of older individuals and discusses the development of the elderly self. Issues surrounding the development and maintenance of the self, and issues providing for its integration and cohesiveness, are discussed and meaningfully related to the changes occurring and later incorporated into the evolving elderly self.