Psychotherapy—A Dynamic Approach. By Paul A. Dewald. New York:  Basic Books. Inc., 1964.

Dr. Dewald has written an excellent exposition of Freudian theory which every student of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy can read with benefit; he is obviously an experienced therapist, and it is apparent that he is an excellent teacher, too. He gives the beginning student the benefit of an organized point of view.

The author has emphasized that in order to practice psychoanalysis or psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy, the therapist must have developed skills which relate theory and practice. Be this as it may, there are many excellent therapists from a variety of schools who achieve results with their patients although their stated theories are completely different. This lends credence to the possibility that all therapists who succeed in psychotherapy must carry out similar therapeutic strategies regardless of their verbalized concepts. Dr. Dewald's therapeutic chapters stress a method of determining the nature of the patient's problem, the role of the therapist, the role of the patient, the contract, transference and countertransference, insight, working through, and the process of termination. The richness of the author's therapeutic experience is reflected in this section. But the book suffers from the attempt to fit the methodology of psychotherapy into the model of orthodox psychoanalytic theory.

The information on the book jacket states that Dr. Dewald has purposely left out of his discussion some of the more highly theoretical, abstract, and controversial aspects of basic psychoanalytic theory; however, this reviewer finds that he has included many controversial subjects, and one wonders whether the interests of students would not better be served if Dr. Dewald had presented additional contemporary ideas, or if he had made an attempt to extract from Freud's work in a more critical way. There are several concepts presented which may lead only to confusion in the minds of neophytes. The author could have pointed out, for exam