Forensic Psychotherapy. Crime, Psychodynamics and the Offender Patient. Edited by Christopher Cordess & Murray Cox. Two volumes.  Jessica Kingsley. £165. Pp.  866.

This is a fascinating book — as much in the conception as in the execution. As a reviewer, I did what few will do: I read through all 866 pages by sixty-six authors. Add on the 150 pages of index and references (approximately 1400) and you must have one of the longest books to be published in psychotherapy. Obviously it is a ‘curate's egg’ - bad in parts - but it is remarkable how enjoyable and interesting so much of it is. My guess is that the authors invited all the people they know to be professionally involved in the emerging sub-specialty of forensic psychotherapy to write on a subject largely of their own choice. The result is an enormously varied collection of papers, ranging in length from three to thirty-six pages. The book is divided into two volumes, Mainly Theory and Mainly Practice. The first is more coherent; the second more a potpourri. Inevitably there is much duplication of themes. Fierce editing might have removed some of this, but would have destroyed many of the papers which were really written to be read on their own.

The emphasis is on psychoanalytic theory and its application in the individual and group setting. Other forms of therapy - cognitive behaviour, systems theory, drama therapy, art therapy, music therapy, dance therapy — are all given a chapter. Perhaps this emphasis on the psychodynamic reflects the current bias within the Health Service, but it does not reflect the position in the Prison Service, of which the 57,000 users must represent the largest collection of potential beneficiaries for forensic psychotherapy in the country. Here the dominant theory is cognitive-behavioural.