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The theme of this book is the nurse-patient relationship and its many vicissitudes. The point of view is psychoanalytic and dynamic. Accordingly, the authors first define the difficult role of the nurse in handling transference and countertransference problems. They point
out the difficulties inherent in the intermediate position which nurses occupy between the patient and the doctor. The authors then follow a brief introduction to psychoanalysis with a detailed consideration of the “stages of life”: infancy, the preschool period, middle childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, and old age. A useful section, “Death, Grief, and Mourning,” closes the book. Each chapter is followed by an excellent list of references to books and articles and by a brief discussion of especially relevant excerpts from the literature.
Most of the material is familiar to students in the fields; however, the maintenance of the basic point of view achieves the authors' objective with regard to the special emotional problems confronting the nurse in the management of her patient. Throughout the book the effect of illness on the patient is stressed. This “somatopsychic” point of view is of paramount importance in general, and of especial relevance to this book. The concepts of regression, coping maneuvers, and modes of defense are thoroughly considered from the standpoint of general personality organization and the stress of illness and hospitalization in the various stages of life. Uniformly, the emphasis is on treating the patient as an individual human being who must be considered in his own right and in relation to his total past history, his current problems, and his idiosyncratic coping capacity. The book is a most timely antidote to the growing mechanization and computerization which is permeating too much of modern medical practice.