No topic in psychology today occupies a place of greater prominence than psychotherapy. Yet the subject is perhaps more replete with confusion and contradiction than any other in psychology. Neither layman nor therapist can hope to discover in the volumes written on the subject any very accurate picture of what most psychotherapy really consists of. There is a temptation to infer-not quite justlythat those who are doing therapy lack time to write about it and those who write lack very much diversified experience with it.Part of the difficulty with the literature lies in the fact that it fails to come t o grips with certain essential data. These data include the fact (1) that all therapists, of all shades of opinion and degrees of formal training, get results-and suffer failures; (2) that therapy is of necessity practiced under the most varied circumstances and must, therefore, include techniques of great flexibility; and (3) that criteria for measuring even the overall results of therapy are so inadequate that the validity of studies purporting to show results related to particular techniques is especially doubtfulThe apparent paradox that therapists of diametrically opposed philosophies are succcsafully using very different techniques on the same type of disorders has bcen emphasized before by the writer ( 3 ) and others@). The contrast between orthodox analysis or nondirective therapy and "conditioned reflex therapy", as outlined recently by Xalter(l7), is a striking example. But the point is more impressive still when we remind ourselves that the major share of psychotherapy done today is performed by people who are not even called therapists : ministers, general practitioners, teachers, social workers, lawyers, domestic relations and juvenile judges, probation officers and by laymen including ex-alcoholics, Big Brothers, Scout masters, and others. Any psychotherapist close to community life knows that these people, who usually lack formal psychological training, treat some cases as difficult as his and frequently with as much success as he achieves.By adopting either a psychoanalytic or a nondirective approach, it is possible for a therapist t o have at his disposal a fairly consistent theory, philosophy, or set of techniques and to find ample material in the literature describing them. Unfortunately, neither of these therapies can ever meet the practical demand for psychological treatment. The duration of orthodox analysjs makes it uneconomic and feasihle only for research, training, and the treatment of a minute segment of society. Orthodox nondirective therapy, on the other hand, is circumscribed by a rigid philosophy which disqualifies it in situations where the need for therapy is not already recognized by the patient or where therapy must be undertaken under compulsion or pressure, Since most therapists, especially those not in private practice, receive many patients who have to be rather "directively" led to understand why they were referred or committed and why they should undergo therapy(I'1, a nondi...