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PEPTIC ULCER and PSYCHOANALYSIS, by Angel Garma. Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs No. 85. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1958, vii + 143 pages, $6.00.
Angel Garma states that gastric and duodenal ulcers are dependent upon emotions following conflicts in individuals of specific personality type. According to him, the dependence of such patients "through being in love with someone who does not satisfy them genitally acts more traumatically because they are often people with a professional activity that demands too much of them and … prevents them from discharging the emotional tension of their conflicts." Mothers of the ulcer type are usually affectionate and capable but domineering and aggressive. They feed the baby well but often withhold solid food too long and encourage the child's dependence. Independence is achieved at the cost of renouncing genital satisfactions. In later conflict situations, the image of the bad internalized mother acts aggressively upon the individual's stomach. Excessive remorse, unconsciously based upon sensations of being bitten internally, is provoked. This induces alimentary disorders. Treatment should be intensive and profound and designed to modify the unconscious personality.
THEORY OF PSYCHOANALYTIC TECHNIQUE, by Karl A. Menninger. New York: Basic Books, 1958, xiii + 206 pages, $4.75.
Menninger calls attention to Fenichel's observation on the paucity of literature, not on psychoanalytic technique, but on the theory of technique. In this book he proposes to examine "some of the psychodynamic principles operative in the practice" of psychoanalysis. This book consists of a written