206
Book
Reviews
a treatment group that received all components and
a
control group. A design that
systematically omits components from various treatment groups would be necessary to
understand which components produce independent effects and which interact with other
components,
Is
a
complex program of therapy such as the one presented in this book more pro-
gram or more politics?
A
complex program composed of components that had been
shown to be: (a) effective either independently or interactively, and (b) more effective
than any smaller set of its components would certainly be desirable. However, in the
absence of such evidence,
a
“multimodal” program is likely to be more appealing than
it is effective. The program may include enough different material to get
a
variety of
therapeutic schools “behind” it, but at the expense of redundancy, taking time from
a more effective component for
a
less effective component, and difficulty in implemen-
tation, administration, and (as has been mentioned) evaluation. Politics may be the art
of compromise, but science
-
even applied science
-
definitely is not.
In summary, this book has useful information for any applied professional faced
with the task of dealing with aggressive youth. Some of the material will be useful for
all professional workers, but implementing all of it will probably remain the exclusive
achievement of Goldstein and his coworkers.
James A. Wakefield, Jr.
California State University,
Stanislaus
REFERENCES
GOLDSTEIN,
A.
P.,
SPRAFIN,
R.
P.,
GERSHAW,
N.
J.,
&
KLEIN,
P.
(1980).
Skill-streaming the adolescent:
A
strucfured learning approach
to
teaching prosocial
skills.
Champaign,
IL:
Research Press.
WAKEFIELD,
J.
A.,
JR.
(1982).
Review
of
Skill-streaming the adolescent
by
Goldstein et al.
Psychology
in
the Schools,
19,
414-415.
Psychology
in
rhe
Schools
Volume
25,
April
I988
PALMER, J.
0.
(1983).
Thepsychological assessment
of
children,
(2nd ed.). New York:
Wiley,
634
pp.,
$40.00.
The first edition of the
Psychological Assessment
of
Children
was originally pub-
lished in
1970.
Thirteen years have passed between the publication of that first edition
and Palmer’s latest effort, and the field of child personality assessment has evolved con-
siderably in that span of time. Behavioral assessment has had a tremendous impact on
the practice of psychological assessment, and several scales such as the Child Behavior
Profile (Achenbach,
1980)
and the Personality Inventory for Children (Wirt
&
Lachar,
1981)
have arrived on the scene. Despite these and many other innovations, Palmer’s
second edition has remained essentially true to its initial assumption that the ego should
be the primary object of psychological assessment. For proponents of the clinical and
psychoanalytic approaches, this may be a welcome perspective; for others, it may seem
partisan and limited.