Written in a modest tone, this book offers startling innovations in traditional medical methods of classification. The authors urge a unitary concept of personality and of mental illness, and would substitute notions of maladjustment and “dyscontrol” for harsher sounding diagnostic categories. They take the schizophrenic syndrome as a prototype and their argument rests on the optimistic ground that there are forces in the sick person which tend towards a homoeostatic “vital balance.”