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The venerable Samuel Johnson has been a model for many dictionary writers and Richard Chessick explicitly takes Dr. Johnson as his ideal in this enterprise. While acknowledging his debt to several pioneer dictionary writers in the field of mental health, Chessick makes reference to Johnson more than any other author except Freud, Melanie Klein, Kohut, and himself. Composing in a discursive, narrative style, Chessick succeeds in putting a very personal stamp on what is usually meant to be a more formalistic reference work.
Writing for the practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist, Chessick aims to give practical advice on clinical matters and to avoid metapsychological controversies. The audience he seeks includes both experienced clinicians and those in training. The latter group would use it as a reference; the former, he hopes, might read it from cover to cover.
For more scholarly definitions, Chessick recommends Campbell (1989) and Moore and Fine (1990); his is a clinical approach.
Chessick's ambitious goals require of a reviewer a double focus. Surely, the book must be read cover to cover and its several aims evaluated as to their relative success. The book must also be judged as the reference work its title and format imply. As a book, rather than a dictionary, this work is a series of essays of various lengths on the many topics of interest to Chessick. As is true of much of Chessick's prior work, there is a heavy emphasis on