Is Smaller Necessarily Better? The Psychotherapeutic Process: A Research Handbook. L 5. Greenberg and W. M. Pinsof (Eds.). New York: Guilford Press, 1986. (741 pp.) This is a very long book which, unfortunately, is likely to put off the uninitiated student/reader who might be interested in learning more about process research in psychotherapy. It consists of an introductory chapter which spells out the rationale of process research, followed by 15 chapters all describing different systems for process analysis, and finally, three chapters on the methodology of process research. The editors propose to fulfill three goals: stimulate research in the process of psychotherapy; describe new developments in the field of psychotherapy process research since the early encyclopedic volume by Kiesler (1973); and finally, consolidate the methodological base of process research. Process research is described as "the study of the interaction between the patient and therapist systems. The goal of process research is to identify the patterns and mechanisms of change in the interaction between these systems. Process research covers all of the behaviors and experiences of these systems, within and outside of the treatment sessions, which pertain to the process of change" (reviewer's italics). This definition contains what is, in fact, wrong and tedious with process research. How can one study all of the behaviors and experiences of therapist and patient which are relevant to change? And how does one decide what is relevant to therapeutic change? The rationale for process research is the understanding of what it is in psychotherapy which works and how it works. Thus, process research should only make sense if it relates to outcome, gets rid of the dichotomy outcome and process, develops a theory of psychotherapy, and furthers therapy effectiveness. The therapist involved in process research has several decisions to make at the outset: what aspect of the therapy session to study? How small should the units of study be? Should therapist's and/or patient's behavior be studied? Should verbal and/or nonverbal behavior be studied? Who should rate the sessions, observers (called nonparticipant observation systems) and/or the therapist and the patient (called participant observation systems)? However, the general theoretical and clinical orientation of the researcher will largely determine the aspects of therapy deemed important and, therefore, suitable targets for study. Up to now, as pointed out by the editors in the introductory chapter, process research is necessarily hampered by a "lack of clear, specific microtherapy theory that specifies what should occur when and the relationship between intherapy and out-of-therapy processes at specific points in therapy." A review of the 15 chapters detailing specific systems shows striking biases towards Rogerian client-centered therapy, towards nonparticipant observation systems, and towards verbal content analysis; the units of analysis vary from the nearly imperceptibly small to larger chunks of therapy sessions. Since the scales described in this volume and listed below are not exhaustive, process research is evidently a prolific growth area: (1) Experiencing Scales (EXP) (Klein, M., Mathieu-Coughlan, P., & Kiesler, D. J.) developed from experiential and client-centered theories, but could be applied to other forms of therapy. The scales consist of a seven-point Patient Experiencing Scale and a seven-point Therapist Experiencing Scale applied to units of two to eight minutes of tape recordings or transcripts rated by trained observers. (2) The Client Vocal Quality System (CVQ) (Rice, L. N., & Kerr, G. P.), developed from client-centered psychotherapy, aims to measure "meaningful patterns of vocal features" in patients. Four aspects of patients' speech are rated by expert judges for production of accentuations, accentuation pattern, pace, terminal contour, perceived energy, and disruption of speech pattern. …