Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEWS

The reviews this issue reflect the breadth and inclusiveness of the existential perspective. The first two are of the same book which is a snapshot of the state of Existential Analysis at the start of the 21st century – a book that represents this very breadth and inclusiveness. The other reviews are further aspects of this breadth and inclusiveness. An existential analysis is concerned with narrative, biography and autobiography and the next book is about the relationship between Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, a relationship between individuals, ideas, and cultures that is fascinating to revisit on this occasion and doubtless with be revisited again inevitably with different conclusions. It is a phenomenological truth that every time we look at something we look at it anew from a different place and we see different things. It is easy to imagine that everyone shares our worldview and the next book which revisits the issue of medication in psychiatry is a reminder that they do not. Our personal experience and also our clinical work also remind us of the importance of early family experiences and the next book is about birth order, in particular the only child experience and the way it echoes through life. The last issue of the journal had two papers about sexuality and the next book fruitfully continues a debate which will endure. It is a growing trend in publishing in the increasing digital age that books come with extra digital content that either cannot be put in the book because of space or because of the nature of the medium, and this book is one of those. We return to philosophy and history in the next book which is one of those surprises in that it is a book that may seem on first glance to be outside our usual boundary, but it is books such as this that remind us if we are so inclined not to play safe, or to read safe. In this way we say existentially alive. Film is a medium that existentialism has had a great deal to say about and the final book is another prompt to aliveness, asking us to acknowledge the insights of psychoanalysis and also of film as a unique medium. I look forward to a continuation of the existential interest in film.

Martin Adams

Existential Therapy: Legacy, Vibrancy and Dialogue

Laura Barnett & Greg Madison (eds.) (2012). London: Routledge.

Laura Barnett and Greg Madison have edited a book that is more than just another book on existential therapy. It aspires to be a landmark. It delineates an international state of the art of existential therapy a decade within the 21st century.

The book aspires to making a new mark in our therapeutic landscape