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To write a book for students on technique, and to do it well, deserves special notice. To formulate, objectively, an analyst's subjective clinical experience is a task that has been attempted periodically, and with varying success. Fine has managed to be technical while retaining a consistent humanistic outlook. The structure of the book is thoroughly Freudian, whereas the positive outlook on therapy as a process occurring between two individuals, both of whom grow in the process, shows the influence of Sullivan's clinical stance. This attempt———to take the best from both———represents the strength and the weakness of Fine's book.
The volume follows, by chapter, the traditional Freudian topical divisions: four chapters on transference, three on resistance, two on countertransference, two on interpretation, three on working through, and one on termination. This is standard fare for textbooks on psychoanalytic technique. It is also their limitation, since it allows little room for reformulations that could lead us forward in our understanding. Fine, in the best psychoanalytic tradition, suggests (p. 224) that the therapist use ordinary language in making interpretations. I think it would be refreshing to write a book on technique in the same way. It would include the phenomena of transference, resistance, countertransference, interpretation, and working through, but without limiting the conceptual development by the usual labels. Although Fine's philosophy of therapy is decidedly humanistic, his technical frame of reference is still caught up in mental mechanisms rather than geared to a common humanity.
Similarly, whereas an interpersonal approach can be noted throughout Fine's presentation, it remains largely at a surface level. The book shows little influence of the substantial body of knowledge accumulated from ego psychology and object relations theory. Although interpersonal in spirit, the book lacks the technical specificity of object relations theory to turn it in