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The author has given this Swedish book the subtitle A psychological perspective. Although the author is a psychologist, the subtitle does not give proper coverage. Marianne Lerner is a trained classical psychoanalyst and her book is a description of how she, in individual therapy and by regular psychoanalysis, treats children who have suffered from life-threatening diseases such as asthma and colitis ulcerosa.
At the end of the book, we find a passage of 12 pages by the child psychiatrist Kerstin Laurén.
As to references, Marianne Lerner sticks to very well-known authorities, as, e.g., Alexander, Bastians, Bion, Bruch, Cannon, Mahler, Sperling, Spitz, and last but not least, Winnicott, who has had considerable influence on Scandinavian psychoanalysis.
Lerner's viewpoints are close to those of Joyce McDougall who is frequently referred to; however, in her monograph, she has placed the psychosomatic diseases in the same frame of reference as the biological, neurophysiological, social, philosophical, and poetical perspectives, which make the book a great experience.
In addition, she attaches importance to the point that the treatment of these often life-threatened patients is carried out in an atmosphere of safe and trustful cooperation between the somatic experts and the nurses. The cooperation must be characterized by a mutual respect, not only between the various professionals involved, but also taking full account of the patients' viewpoints. This must not be misunderstood as if it were a kind of group therapy. We are here concerned with individual therapy where the parents are now and then taken into treatment, but not with the patient's therapist.
The book is easily read and the clinical vignettes are individually small gems. Just because theory and practice are described so simply, the reader might be seduced into forgetting that every treatment is a work of art—perhaps much more than it is a scientific exercise carried out lege artis, which it also is.
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