The Investigation of Psychotherapy. Edited by Arnold P. Goldstein and Sanford J. Dean. New York:  Wiley, 1966.  443 pp.

The Investigation of Psychotherapy is a significant source book for the student of psychotherapy. Although the book consists of “commentaries and readings” (63 papers, all of which have been previously published), there is an air of newness and “frontier of science” spirit that pervades the volume. The editors present papers which constitute a “viable and clearly consequential research endeavor.” They cover both “classical” and “boldly imaginative and unconventional” approaches.

The book is divided into Research Philosophies and Ethical Issues, Design and Measurement, Outcome Research, Process Research and Analogue Research. In the section entitled Research Philosophies we find six papers representing currently fashionable ways of looking at psycho-therapeutic behavior modification. Rogers, as expected, responds to the person rather than the schizophrenic label and Glover speaks of stagnation in psychoanalytic research. Reyna reports on conditioning therapies, rather neglecting to discuss the “research philosophies” indicated by the title of this section. Krasner covers reinforcement theory as related to verbal behavior and writes his usual interesting paper. Goldstein integrates social psychological findings into psychotherapy research and Cowen tries to give us a model which would bring the entire psycho-therapeutic problem into the laboratory for testing. These are interesting approaches of looking at the psychotherapeutic problem, but they also bring to our attention how very little philosophical distance we have traveled in our conceptualizations.

It is appropriate that the models of behavior control are followed by Ethical Issues. Berg's guidelines for research with human subjects are of interest: (1) consent of Ss, (2) confidentiality, and (3) standard acceptable research procedure. He omits one principle presently integrated in USPH policy: the research's significance for human welfare as balanced against the risks taken. While the latter principle is vague an