Object Relations Psychotherapy: An Individualized and Interactive Approach to Diagnosis and Treatment

Rating:
Summary: Pithy, yet accessible to the novice psych student
Review: This book was helpful to me as an undergraduate studying within an independent-learning model. I appreciated that Glickauf-Hughes and Wells defined their terms quite specifically to psychodynamic theory and took pains to point out when certain theorists were more arbitrary in their use of "ego", for example. The entire first chapter is an excellent overview the major variations and evolution of this continuum of theories, and the subsequent chapters offer specific applications and brief case histories that, I am certain, would be very useful for the more advanced practitioner. The text is lucid and conveys complex points with brevity--not a small task for so many psychological texts. The reason I only gave it four stars is because it doesn't include any refutation of the "refrigerator mom" theory (for one) as a cause for schizophrenia--or do psychoanalysts still believe this to be true? But even if you do not agree with psychodynamic theory, this is a useful text for anyone investigating Western Psychology's explanation of the many permutations and pitfalls that occur when one's 'self' relates to 'other.'