Contemporary Psychotherapies. Gary S. Belkin. Chicago:  Rand McNally and College Publishing Co.: Therapists At Work: A Demonstration of Theory and Technique. Edited by Donald S. Milman and George D. Goldman. Dubuque, Iowa:  Kendall-Hunt Publishing Co.

Is a new spirit of ecumenicism making itself felt in the land of psychoanalysis? It would be most welcome if it were, surely. These two books seem to provide a bit of evidence for it, to add to such phenomena as the splendid interdisciplinary conferences of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and for that matter the very existence, not to say burgeoning, of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis itself.

The two volumes, though they differ in focus and emphasis, set about similar tasks: each means to present its intended readership with insight into a variety of therapeutic styles and theories by allowing practitioners to speak for themselves in one way or another. Each manages to do this with impressive fairness while covering a broad spectrum of schools.

The Adelphi University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy Conference series, of which Therapists at Work is the latest volume, is another apparent manifestation of this ecumenical spirit. In this book, six schools of therapeutic technique are represented, each by a therapist who writes a short introductory essay on theory and then conducts a patient interview (of another therapist's patient, before an audience). Reuben Fine speaks for Freudian psychoanalysis, Sabert Basescu for existential psychoanalysis, Hyman Spotnitz for modern psychoanalysis, Erving Polster (with Miriam Polster) for gestalt therapy, Harris B. Peck for transactional analysis, and Arnold