Books
A short reading list, with one sentence on what each book is for.
Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory
Jay Greenberg, Stephen A. Mitchell · Harvard University Press · 1983
Publisher pageThe map of the field. Drive-structure against relational-structure, argued fairly on both sides.
Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis
Stephen A. Mitchell · Harvard University Press · 1988
Publisher pageThe book that named the relational turn in American psychoanalysis.
Recognition and mutuality, and why domination is not simply an error.
The most useful single book for a trainee. Character understood rather than merely coded.
Inferiority, compensation and social interest. Adler's ideas are now so absorbed they read as common sense.
Why people give away the freedom they have won. Written in 1941 and still uncomfortable.
Childhood and Society
Erik Homburger Erikson · W. W. Norton · 1950
The eight stages, and the introduction of culture and history into developmental theory.
The tyranny of the should. Horney's mature account of the idealised self.
Personality as what happens between people. The root of the interpersonal school.
The method set out in full, with transcripts. More rigorous than its reputation suggests.
Gestalt Therapy
Frederick Perls, Ralph Hefferline, Paul Goodman · Souvenir Press · 1951
The founding text of Gestalt. Half theory, half exercises the reader is meant to do.
The necessary and sufficient conditions, and the book that made them common currency.
The felt sense. Grew directly out of research into why some therapies worked and others did not.
Late Rogers, reflective and less programmatic, on presence as well as technique.
The most widely read book on this list, and the origin of logotherapy.
Psychosis rendered intelligible rather than merely classified.
The American existential tradition on the loss of both eros and intention.
The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy
Irvin David Yalom, Molyn Leszcz · Basic Books · 1970
Publisher pageThe standard text on group work anywhere in the world, in its sixth edition.
Death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness treated as clinical material.
The theory before the bestseller. Ego states set out as a clinical system.