From Library Journal
Inclusive, integrated, and lively, this book sets a new, high standard as an introduction to contemporary psychoanalysis. The authors, both of whom are respected as teachers, clinicians, and theorists, concisely demythologize Sigmund Freud and engage themselves with a score of his key successors (including five women). Brief biographies and succinct theoretical summaries are fleshed out with clinical examples. Sophisticated but unpretentious, the authors have a grasp of philosophy and history of science and the ability to make sense of the most difficult writers, including Harry Stack Sullivan, Melanie Klein, and Jacques Lacan. Students, therapists, and serious general readers will find this richer than Charles Brenner's An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis (Doubleday, 1974), sounder than Judith Mishne's The Evolution and Application of Clinical Theory (Free Pr., 1993), and more readable than either.?E. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, D.C.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Mitchell and Black, experts in the field of psychotherapy, have written an excellent work on the history of modern psychoanalytic thought and on the ideas and theories of several prominent psychotherapists. The various schools of thought are introduced and basic concepts are explained as the authors explore the work of such major psychotherapists as Sigmund Freud, Henry Stack Sullivan, and Melanie Klein, eventually encompassing all the major developments in psychoanalytic thought since Freud. Although this is an extremely well written book and provides a clear, thorough introduction to several theories about the mysterious workings of the mind, the jargon inherent in this field makes it somewhat difficult to read. Readers will need at least a basic understanding of or interest in psychotherapy to comprehend it fully. Kathleen Hughes

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This beautiful and jargon-free work makes modern psychoanalytic thinking -- particularly the work of Freud's disciples and dissenters -- accessible to the general reader and the beginning student.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal