Just as Duncan Hines, Michelin, and Baedecker guide the inexperienced traveler, this book directs the uninitiated through the land of psychotherapy. In his comprehensive epistemology, the author carefully examines the knowledge, limitations, validity, and diversity of psychotherapeutic theories and practices. Avoiding the "how to do it" aspects of the psychiatric profession, Dr. Frank addresses his book to both laymen and professional colleagues. In his words, "The purpose of this book is to review data from various sources that may help to identify and clarify the active ingredients of various forms of psychotherapy in our own and other cultures by searching for their common features." (p. 2.) The content is arranged into twelve chapters, comprising such aspects as the contemporary conceptual framework of psychotherapy, religious healing, the placebo effect, experimental studies, individual and group psychotherapy, and hospital and community psychiatry. The book is lucidly written, and each chapter is terminated