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The title of this engrossing book holds the secret of its importance and timeliness. It is common for those who practice from Horney's orientation to start an initial interview with, “Can I help you?” How a patient answers the question and how the therapist asks it (his existential position) is what Karen Horney was all about: present process rather than traumatic genesis is the focus of therapeutic attention.
Through the book's thirty-three chapters, Kelman has with great devotion and care traced the origins and developments of the holistic approach. Almost at once he establishes the foundations on which Horney built: a differentiation of solution from resolution of neurotic conflicts, the influence of culture on human development, the nature of man and the “human drama,” and neurosis as a disturbance in one's relation “to self and others” (p. 50). The book contains a brief biography of Horney and proceeds from there, in detailed thoroughness, to recount the development of this therapeutic approach. The contents include neurotic disturbances, the symbolizing process, the doctor-patient relationship, dreams, and the initial interview. The two chapters on the initial interview are invaluable for clinicians exploring the techniques of the briefer therapies, though I doubt this was Kelman's intent. I also suspect that many readers will see the three chapters on technique as the core of the book.
The issues that revolve around technique are formidable. Whether we can profitably discuss opinions on techniques based on different theoretical models cannot be considered in a brief review. Kelman, himself a great contributor to the theory and practice of psychotherapy, points out the significant divergencies among Freudian, post-Freudian, and holistic approaches. These divergencies derive from, among other things, the different definitions of insight, interpretation, and the unconscious used in the holistic view. For example, insight is seen as a process with an internal and a