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This book represents Sullivan's latest conception of psychiatry. It is composed of a series of lectures given in 1946 and 1947 which have been edited by H. S. Perry and M. L. Gawel, with Mabel B. Cohen as psychiatric consultant.
In her introduction, Cohen gives a concise, brief outline of Sullivan's scientific development and of his most important contributions to psychiatry. She points to his absorbing interest in obsessional and schizophrenic manifestations and in "the specific patterns of interaction" between people which Freud presumably neglected in his earlier writings. Despite her emphasis on Sullivan's psychoanalytic training, Cohen admits Sullivan's failure to take into consideration phenomena such as infantile sexuality and hysteria. As we shall see, these remarks describe Sullivan's attitude to psychoanalysis very benevolently.
The first, most important, part of the volume presents "Introductory Concepts." The next 264 out of 384 pages are devoted to discussions of "The Developmental Epochs." The third part deals with mental disorders, i.e., schizophrenic manifestations, and the brief last part offers suggestions for "a psychiatry of peoples."
As always, Sullivan's diction and style are most characteristic and inimitable. His rather bizarre mixture of naïve-popular and complicated-formalistic thinking and writing is colorful, amusing, and—to me—quite fascinating. Occasionally, though, his longwinded sentences remind one of German philosophers—except for the lack of profundity evident in them.
To begin with the question of nomenclature, Sullivan confesses that he does "not like to coin fresh terms." But Freudian terms must have been anathema to him. Apparently quite unaware of the significant distinction between unconscious, preconscious, and conscious, he replaces these "old-fashioned" terms by "overt" and "covert"; he rejects