The scholarly, orderly and historically minded Karl Menninger, a student of Harvard's brilliant teacher of psychiatry, Professor Southard, is a man for whom warmth in human relations has been all-important. In The Vital Balance, Dr. Menninger crystallized his conceptions of the evolutionary process in mental health and illness into a comprehensive theory of human behavior. He has expanded his views and has included material on the history of the diagnosis and treatment of mental ills. This history is liberally sprinkled through the book, but the major portion of it is collected and collated in a seventy-page Appendix at the end of the work. It amply illustrates the developmental vicissitudes of psychiatric diagnosis throughout the centuries.