‘From Research to Clinical Practice—The Implications of Social and Developmental Research for Psychotherapy’ edited by George Stricker and Robert H Keisner. Pp.  457. New York:  Plenum, $45.

With such a title this book deserves to fail! Only the subtitle suggests to a potential reader that it has anything at all to do with psychotherapy. It is of course all American, with nearly half the contributors coming from New York. All are psychologists who were asked by the editors to “focus on the contributions that basic research in social and developmental psychology can make to the practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy.”

In the first section, ‘Basic Issues’, there are papers which address the problem of why there is relatively so little research in the field of psychotherapy, or at least, why the research that does exist is so often ignored. It is suggested that practitioners start off with positive views towards research, but as time goes by, and they become more involved in therapy, this commitment diminishes. The authors point out that the “chasm” between research and practice seems not to be so wide in some other forms of intervention—e.g. behaviour therapy and counselling based on social psychology. Certainly the work of Herbert and his colleagues in Leicester comes to mind in this context. An interesting paper by Dickman and Sechrest investigates the links between memory and failure of recall in psychotherapy, both psychodynamic and cognitive. The paper suggests that factors other than emotional significance may be involved when a patient “fails to remember’ ‘.

Two controversial papers follow: one of which attempts to examine the psychotherapeutic dyad in terms of the psychology of leadership, particularly the issues of power and charisma. The other paper concentrates on the possible contributions to psychotherapy that may be made by understanding nonverbal behaviour, including feedback by videotape. I well remember being castigated in my psychotherapy training for having the temerity to produce a tape of some sessions with a patient, rather than just my recollections!

Harvey and his co-workers from Texas present a very interesting section, based on att