286 BOOK REVIEWS

of the therapy and the individuals’ needs is to be achieved. The authors are sensitive to this and. in the final chapter on the ‘art’ of cognitive therapy, they write: “In the case of cognitive therapy the art lies in balancing the sometimes mutually

exclusive needs and competing characteristics of four systems: cognitive therapy, the group. the leaders and the individual members”. They give a thoughtful account of the sorts of problems which can arise with some suggestions for how to overcome them.

This book is a good practical guide to cognitive therapy with the elderly, and may also be of interest to clinicians using group cognitive therapy with other types of client. Perhaps more emphasis could have been placed on the difficulties of failing health and physical disability which the old people have to face and which limit the range of any therapy which uses behavioural techniques. It is refreshing to find a book which concentrates on the question ‘How do you do it?’ rather than ‘Does it work?, but disappointing that some of the more recent studies of cognitive therapy with the elderly are not mentioned. Presumably the book went to press before these were published. Having produced a form of group cognitive therapy with good face validity, it is to be hoped that the authors will now be carrying out their own outcome trial to establish its efficacy.

S. Moonay

S. SHIFFMAN and T. A. WILLS (Eds): Coping andSubstance Abuse. Academic Press, London (1985). Pages xxiii + 408. f47.50 (hardback); f26.50 (paperback).

The subject matter of this volume will be familiar to most readers; indeed, no discussion of the issues underlying addictive behaviours can be complete without consideration of the role played by stress and attempts to cope with it. Shiffman and Wills have taken as their remit the discussion and integration of literature relating to the two broad areas referred to in the title, and to present against this theoretical background a range of contributions describing recent studies.

Their first chapter, an introductory review, is a pleasure to read and, in my view, successfully serves two functions: by virtue of a carefully structured presentation, it both apprises the reader of a broad spectrum of relevant information. and at the same time imposes a logic upon it such that it is readily assimilated. Chapter 2, by Grunberg and Baum, also deserves special comment as a clear and up-to-date description of biological bases for possible interactions between stress and substance use.

Thereafter, Shiffman and Wills classify the issues according to a multi-axial system whose three main axes refer to the nature of the stress mechanisms (psychosocial vs biological), the nature of the situation to be coped with (coping with stress vs coping with temptation). and the stage in the addiction cycle (initiation, maintenance and cessation of substance use). Their explanatory constructs are in terms of social learning theory, and it is therefore most fitting that the concluding summary has been written by Marlatt who is of course well-known for his formulations of addiction within this tradition.

This conceptual framework permits the presentation side-by-side of data from studies in various populations of subjects including, for instance, smokers, alcoholics, opiate users and the obese. Individual chapters all include a summary of background theory and therefore may easily be read in isolation; but in addition, each group of chapters is preceded by a brief editorial comment highlighting their commonalities and facilitating cross-fertilization of questions and methods.

The book is to be highly recommended as a rich resource for further research designs, in terms of both the theoretical analysis and also the range of investigative methods and instruments described. Furthermore, since many of the studies evaluate intervention techniques which are specified in some detail. there is also much for the clinician to gain.

JANE POWELL

C. L. KLEINKE: Meeting and L’ndersrunding People. Freeman, New York (1986). Pages viii + 305. f II.95 (paperback); f21.95 (hardback).

Although this book is presented as a ‘how to’ book in Dale Carnegie fashion, this is misleading when almost a third of its pages are devoted to extensive notes, references and indexes. The research on which the book is based is almost exclusively drawn from North American literature of the mid-sixties through to the early eighties.

Contrary to expectations aroused by reading the blurb, the book, especially in the early chapters, proved rather heavy going. Research references are piled on top of one another, often leading to inconclusive, contradictory inferences. The difficulties of operationalizing social psychology concepts SO that precise and predictable generalizations can be made are not overcome by a normative approach even when limitations of context are indicated. The author, as if unwittingly, lapses into common sense explanations to buttress research findings. On the other hand, it may have been a deliberate strategy to create a popular appeal for the book. The end-of-chapter exhortations appear to support the latter explanation. For me at least, the book is neither a persuasive easy read, nor a scholarly assessment of current research in the area of person perception or social skills. The last two chapters entitled “Accuracy in Perceiving People” and “Biases in Perceiving People” are exceptions, in that they are both readable and informative.

The book as a whole fails in its objective, expressed in the sub-title, as a handbook on “how to develop competence in social situations and expand social skills”. an academic psychologist clearly hasn’t.

It would be interesting to speculate on what a Dale Carnegie has got that

MIGEL JAYASINGHE