You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
As an SHO in psychiatry, and having started a psychodynamic long case in the past few months, finding an introductory text that imparted useful information in an easily digestible form was difficult. Now recognized as a key requirement for training towards membership of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, gaining experience in one of the psychotherapies (and having an understanding of the others) is taking on a renewed significance for junior psychiatry trainees.
Sidney Bloch's short text was a welcome primer for the psychotherapy novice. Accessible and exceptionally readable, the authors struck successfully a fine balance between giving enough background to orientate the newcomer to a clear level of understanding, and including too much detail at the expense of readability. That said, each chapter encapsulated sufficient detail to allow reference to important writings and studies in the literature, associated with each particular therapy (see, in particular, the chapters on behavioural and cognitive approaches). Where some of the evidence cited was more than 20 years old, those studies tended to be by some of the most influential researchers in the field, e.g. Masters and Johnson in sex therapy or Aaron Beck on cognitive distortions.
From psychodynamic therapies (individual, long-term, short-term, and group), crisis intervention, through to behavioural and cognitive disciplines, onto couple and sex therapies, family and child, and supportive psychotherapies, the text ended on a laudable note by discussing ethical issues. This closing chapter, by T. Byram Karasu, addressed some of the more controversial areas in psychotherapy, for example the ‘repressed memory controversy’ and the research limitations of proving validity or efficacy. He commented that there are unresolved research problems in the field of psychotherapy. He alluded to certain factors, including the anecdotal nature of individual case reports, the elusiveness of many basic concepts (such as transference