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The authors of this book stress the manifold causes of mental illness while emphasizing the individual's basic psychobiological unity. In my opinion this is the main theme of the book around which the various chapters revolve.
In the first chapter M. Lang discusses the problem of diagnosis and its historical evolution and shows how it has been oscillating between a strictly descriptive attitude and a more dynamic attitude, illustrating the possible extremes in both.
In the second G. Taidelli shows, by means of a thorough examination of the scientific literature on the subject, how various authors, when examining therapeutic techniques, in particular the relationship between drug therapy and psychotherapy, always base their discussion on “which of the two works better”. Even though briefly mentioning that borderline, psychotic, and depressed patients find greater advantage from the association of the two therapies, these authors seem to have never discussed the necessity of changing opinion and taking into account the importance of both therapies.
Why is it not possible to think of an integrated treatment, that is a therapy chosen on the basis of the needs of each patient and in which there is the possibility of a periodic collaboration between the two therapists, exchanging information in order to come to know their patients better and to understand their needs and their development deeper?
This is the question that emerges from the chapter by F. Del Corno on method. He discusses the unreliability of the research as so far reported in literature and considers as a possible field of inquiring the difficulties which may arise from the endeavour to keep this integration. He then suggests that the psychiatrist and the psychoterapist should study the case-histories, observing the therapeutic iter and the problems of interaction: