A brief foreword by Hans H. Strupp and a preface by the author describe and effectively review this detailed summary of psychotherapy process research. Strupp points out that the barely thirty-year history of content analysis as a research tool is characterized by short-lived, discontinuous efforts: typically each team of investigators develops its own instruments which prove not to be congenial to the next team. Kiesler, he writes, “has shouldered the arduous task of assembling the available tools of process research in psychotherapy between the covers of one book … [and] he has classified the various systems and presented each—systematically, fairly, and succinctly” (pp. xv-xvi).

Part I supplies a theoretical and methodological perspective for psychotherapy process research. Part II is devoted to “direct” methods of research, that is, to instruments which code or rate live therapy interviews,