The Paranoid Process. W. W. Meissner. New York:  Jason Aronson, 1981,  872 pp.

This is a clear, well stated, comprehensive, and emininently readable book. The author tries to cover every aspect of paranoia in such depth, breadth, and historical perspective that the impact of the book is much diminished. It seems to me that Meissner includes the sum total of psychopathology, with special emphasis on paranoia.

There are three sections to the book. Part One deals with the structure and functions of paranoid ideation. Here such matters as theoretical perspective, paranoid states, envy and jealousy, paranoid mechanisms and paranoid style are explicated. Part Two consists of 10 case histories. These are descriptive, repetitive, and sometimes simplistic. Often I felt that Meissner overidentified with the patient. In the James case, in which the patient was successfully helped, Meissner described depressive and narcissistic aspects of the case, but little on paranoid process. There is a section on persecutory anxiety (page 418) but when dealing with the patient's thought that his brother and the analyst were in communication, the author sees it as a side issue, although an important one. The paranoid process is not a highlight of this case material. The section on paranoid attitudes describes the patient viewing the world as hostile, aggressive, threatening and controlling, wherein the patient offered himself as a noncombatant. This case was the most analytic one for the author, and the one about which he bad most information. Part Three, entitled, “Toward a Clinical Theory of Paranoid Process,” describes paranoia as a process, including introjection, projection, phobic states, and defensive aspects. It also deals with narcissistic, aggressive, genetic, and developmental aspects, as well as the role of family processes in the genesis of paranoia. The paranoid process is seen as adaptive.

Meissner does not approach paranoia as an aspect of pathology. In his preface he states: “The basic mechanisms, which play themselves out in distorted and exaggerated f