Working with Parents Makes Therapy Work

Abstract

Since this book is aimed at residents and other mental health professional students, its layout should have been more appealing to this new generation of students who, for the most part, demand a more reader friendly text.With 661 pages of text, I am worried that students will not take advantage of this impressive work because of its layout.Second, I wish the publisher and authors had insisted on a paperback edition, even though it may not have halved the amount of the $65.00 price tag.Psychiatric educators are aware that students, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the significant problem of student indebtedness, do not purchase textbooks as frequently as they did 35 years ago when the first edition was published.Third, even though the authors qualify the present day concerns in addressing the topic of masochism, I wished they had not covered self-defeating and self-destructive patient behaviors under this rubric.This is an area that is highly susceptible to student misunderstanding and misuse.What the authors term masochistic behavior could have been accommodated in other chapters and relying more on the patient's need to master conflicted and traumatic emotions and perceptions.