Other Times, Other Realities: Toward a Theory of Psychoanalytic Treatment Arnold H. Modell. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1990, 180 pp., $27.50.

Since the publication in 1968 of his first book, Object Love and Reality: An Introduction to a Psychoanalytic Theory of Object Relations, Arnold Modell has been recognized as an important and original contributor to psychoanalytic thought. Modell in that volume discussed the unsatisfactory state of theories of object relations in psychoanalysis. He lamented the lack of a unified theory, and, after touching on the contributions of many others but of Fairbairn and Winnicott in particular, presented his own original ideas in an elaboration that pointed toward a new synthesis. Now, more than 20 years later, Modell's focus of interest at first sight appears to have shifted towards psychoanalytic treatment. However, closer scrutiny of both title and contents reveals that he is still primarily concerned with theory, albeit now it is the theory of treatment leavened with a few case vignettes.

The book is addressed to the psychoanalytically sophisticated reader. Its introduction and 10 chapters take the reader through a history of ideas that have been postulated to explain why psychoanalysis works. Interspersed are valuable comments by Modell that include his own original contributions to the discussion.

As is customary in psychoanalysis, Modell begins by examining Freud's ideas about treatment. In contrast to Freud's metapsychology, which evolved and changed gradually under the impact of clinical observation, Modell calls Freud's theory of treatment incomplete and static. Freud took the psychoanalytic setting for granted as the frame within which one could apply the psychoanalytic technique. Except for the unobjectionable positive transference, a nonspecific therapeutic relationship, the psychoanalytic relationship was seen