This example of applied psychoanalysis and contribution to community mental health will instruct many psychoanalysts engaged in training psychiatric residents in hospitals, clinics, and social agencies. It will prove frustrating to those seeking magical answers to the complex reality problems and intrapsychic conflicts of typical clinic patients. The authors make it clear that effective brief psychotherapy cannot be accomplished by briefly trained therapists.

Most of the experience forming the clinical core of the volume was obtained at the 'trouble-shooting clinic' of the Elmhurst City Hospital developed by Bellak and his co-workers. The clinic was