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This book is a collection of papers, by Americans except for one by Hanna Segal. Although all are written from a psychoanalytic point of view, there are at least three different schools of thought represented: Kleinian, Ego Psychology and Self Psychology. This enables us to compare and contrast the three different theoretical viewpoints as they apply in the different clinical contexts presented. However, some readers may find the papers do not always contain sufficient background theory, especially for those, like me, who have only slender familiarity with Ego Psychology and Self Psychology. Nevertheless, the papers cover a wide range of clinical topics, and where the writers present clinical material, it is usually clear how the writer is thinking about his patients.
Devised in three sections, the book opens with four papers grouped under the head ‘Theoretical and Developmental Aspects of Paranoia’. Two of these are clinically based. Section Two, ‘Paranoia in Organisational and Social Systems’, includes a Kernberg paper on leadership styles, but overall I found this section the least interesting. Section Three, ‘Paranoia in Clinical Work’ also has four papers, and one of the authors, Arnold Goldberg, writes from a Self Psychology standpoint. I shall not attempt a summary of each paper, but make some detailed and some general points in the hope of providing the potential reader with a flavour of this collection.
The first paper, by the editors Oldham and Bone, provides a lucid summary of