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The volume, Steps in Psychotherapy, has a sub-title, “Study of a Case of Sex Fear Conflict”. It is written by three clinical psychologists and offers as illustrative material seventeen hours of a therapeutic case. The authors set out to show the steps in the development of the case and demonstrate some aspects of the training of an apprentice psychotherapist.
The first chapter is concerned with Brief Psychotherapy, its aim and strategy, and the second is entitled “The Interactive Episode—a Tentative Way of Dividing Psychotherapy into Natural Units for Scientific Description”. The third chapter consists of notes on the Supervision of Psychotherapy and chapters 4, 5, and 6 consider the case of the patient, Mrs. B. Then follow chapters on Strategy, Tactics and The Dynamics of Conflict. Chapters 9 and 10 consider the psychological tests given the patient.
The book is addressed to students, teachers and researchers in the fields of personality adjustment from all disciplines and also to intelligent lay people who keep abreast of things. It is quite well done. Different in format, it shows the productions of the patient, the therapist's remarks, and the supervisor's comments. One need not agree with all of the discussion, of course, but it is evident that this is an effective educational method. The need for careful supervision of the inexperienced therapist is accented. There are 17 interviews reported upon and one chapter is quoted in its entirety from a recording made at the time the interview took place.
The final chapter on the Test Reports contains some interesting comments by the author who had had two clinical psychologists test the patient before her second interview. They observe that some of the test responses seem to show the influence of the patient's cover story. Extraneous motives apparently influence patients' responses on some projective tests and this should be recognized in evaluating them. Secondly, a tester's interpretations may be influenced when he has