Psychiatric Interviews with Children
- Author:
Helen Leiana
Witmer. Commonwealth hund, New York. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege. 15s. 6d.
This book will be welcomed by all those working in the child guidance field who are not wedded to the strictly psycho-analytic approach.
Dr Witmer contributes three valuable chapters on the nature, the development and the dynamic of therapy as these are understood and practised in the United States today. Then follow detailed accounts of ten cases from eight psychotherapists which were chosen to show, by illustration, some of the ways in which direct psychotherapy is being carried out.
The cases are most excellently presented and give the therapist’s assessment of each, the aim of the treatment and the patient-therapist relationship together with the careful technique employed in bringing treatment to an end.
There is a measure of agreement in the treatment of all the cases quoted, but, in each case, something of the personality of the therapist stands out and we see the conscious manner in which this was used in the treatment relationship. To quote Dr Witmer:?
” The following case records thus impose heavy requirements on the reader?for flexibility and for open-mindedness as well as for familiarity with some of the basic concepts of the various schools of dynamic psychiatry. If these records are approached with theories other than those of their writers they may not ‘ make sense and the reader may not be able to see what the therapist was trying to do. We recommend, therefore, that, regardless of final judgements the . reader try to put himself, in his first review of a case, in the therapist’s frame of reference and try to see the case as in part a logical application of the set of theoretical considerations the therapist had in mind.”
We feel that the reader who makes this effort will be amply rewarded.
A full bibliography helps to make the book an outstanding contribution to child guidance literature. D.H.H.
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