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In this volume, Gene Bocknek has taken on the ambitious task of describing and differentiating, both from psychoanalysis and supportive psychotherapy, the weekly dynamic psychotherapy situation. The psychotherapy that he describes is an amalgam of theory and technique drawn from ego psychology, object relations and self psychology. The influence of humanistic psychology, developmental psychology and learning theory is present as well. Bocknek names this synthesis “egoself therapy.”
The goal of the therapeutic process, as Bocknek describes it, is the achievement of structural change. Supportive therapy is differentiated from egoself therapy on this basis. The goal of the former is to sustain the structure that exists; the goal of the latter is to produce structural change. Bocknek is in agreement with the Blancks: “An apparent paradox is that structural change can be greater in psychotherapy man in psychoanalysis. This is because, in psychotherapy, structure building is the very purpose of treatment” (, p. 122). “Structural change is achieved by enhancing ego operations, repairing pathological formations, and recruiting newly available resources” (p. 2). Chapter 4 is devoted to a technical analysis of how this change is accomplished.
Another chapter is devoted to relationship issues. Like many clinicians, Bocknek believes that in weekly psychotherapy, transference “is not a viable centerpiece” (p. 156). He stresses that he does