Forty-two Lives in Treatment

Plot

This 1986 work was the capstone for a sequence of about 70 articles and monographs by almost 20 authors, published over a quarter of a century, that chronicled the Psychotherapy Research Project of the Menninger Foundation. The 30-year project studied the treatment (beginning in the 1950s) and subsequent lives of 42 patients, half of them in psychoanalysis and half in psychoanalytically informed, expressive and supportive psychotherapies. The major findings and conclusions of the research are described in over 100 pages in the final section of the volume, which when it was first released was called the most ambitious and comprehensive psychotherapy research program ever carried out. In a preface, Wallerstein expresses hope that the less expensive softcover edition might give the volume a renewed lease on life. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR