Psychotherapeutic Approaches to Schizophrenic Psychoses

Abstract

Reviews the book, Psychotherapeutic approaches to schizophrenic psychoses edited by Y. O. Alanen, M. G. de Chavez, A. L. S. Silver, and B. Martindale (see record 2009-10328-000). There are some reservations about this book. It suffers from the unevenness of tone and quality endemic in multi-author tomes. Conspicuously absent are psychosocial psychiatry's big beasts-Leff, McGorry and Burns come to mind-who might have lent academic gravitas. Although its critique of conventional services is stringent, the alternatives offered are in the main merely vaguely humanistic. Little attempt is made to delve into the complex relationship between genes and the environment, the exact role of trauma in psychosis, or ways of devising services that meet both psychodynamic and scientific and economic criteria. Silver and her colleagues argue that the tide is turning and that the psychotherapeutic relationship is once more moving to the mainstream of mental health services. Hopefully she will be right, and that this book will play a full part in that shift, not drowning but waving. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)