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PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES ON THE RORSCHACH by Paul M. Lerner Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, 1998, xvi + 494 pp., $59.95
Once the power tool of psychologists, the Rorschach test is alive and well in this contemporary appreciation of a major diagnostic instrument. In the tradition begun by David Rapaport and followed by his creative students Roy Schafer, Martin Mayman, and Robert Holt, Paul Lerner extends their work by operationalizing concepts such as splitting, dissociation, object representations, and false-self organization, while including the work of Schachtel and particularly Exner, along with new diagnostic categories such as anorexia, bulimia, psychopathic personality, and schizotypal disorders. Chapters on evaluating narcissistic and borderline patients are certainly timely as is this modern look at the Rorschach for a new generation of clinicians. The 20-page reference list seems complete.
ZEN AND THE BRAIN Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness by James H. Austin Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998, xxiv + 844 pp., $40.00
The author, a professor emeritus of Neurology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, has written an enormous but rambling exploration of consciousness and brain mechanisms that produce Zen states and similar states in other religions, sleep and dreams. There is an explication of Zen Buddhism, a phenomenon that is growing in the West, but the story could have been told in fewer pages. This is a book written with passion and seriousness. There are suggestions for further reading, a glossary, and a rather complete reference list.