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The present volume is the outcome of the first symposium held by the newly reformed Section of Psychotherapy within the American Psychiatric Association in 1955. Its aim was to provide an opportunity for the scientific comparison of the philosophies and work of the various psychotherapeutic schools. There have subsequently been added reports of progress since 1945 from Austria, Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and South America, with the avowed aim of presenting a world-wide picture of the psychotherapeutic situation.
The volume, comprising some thirty papers by an imposing list of contributors, consists of an introduction by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann on the history and phiosophy of psychotherapy, followed by sections on the principles and the schools of psychotherapy, and by the reports of developments from abroad already mentioned.
Here is a book which must have been eagerly awaited by all those concerned with the perplexities of their subject. Here, indeed, is a comprehensive and catholic survey of the whole field suitable for expert and tyro alike. It will not disappoint, even though it provokes argument and disagreement. For example, while providing a description of all manner of so-called schools whose justification for a separate existence, apart from name, is often hard to understand; the much more important factors common to them all are largely neglected.
The Introduction, however, mentions the fact that most if not all schools of psychodynamic psychotherapy, irrespective of their differences of technique or methodology, agree about the importance of the interaction between patient and doctor in treatment; and for similar reasons the part of Moreno's paper dealing with 'Begegnung: Encounter' is of particular interest. The title of this paper, written with characteristic verve, is: 'Philosophy of the Third Psychiatric Revolution with Special Emphasis on Group Psychotherapy.' The emancipation of the insane from chains is regarded as sym