The Step to Man: JOHN R. PLATT:

New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1966, 216 pages, $5.95.

THE AUTHOR of this collection of twelve provocative essays is John Radar Platt, a former professor of biophysics who is now Associate Director of the Mental Health Research Institute at the University of Michigan. The book jacket calls the essays "visionary, " an unfortunate word since the dictionary says it means unreal, imaginary, and impractical. To make the word apply to this book, I would have to redefine it to mean clear and farsighted, provoking thought that cuts through the boundaries dividing one field of endeavor from another.

The twelve essays are not about the mental health field per se, and I shall not try to summarize their contents. They express Platt's ideas about seemingly disparate subjects like microprinting, chain reactions in scientific ideas, research and development in social problems, the philosophical implications of privacy and a reconsidered view of man's place in the universe. The topics only seem to be separate; Platt's challenging ideas all contribute to the goal stated in the title of the book and the last essay.

When a writer says that "the world has now become too dangerous for anything less than Utopia, " and argues persuasively that Utopia is not only practical but possible, he stimulates us to think about our part in creating a less dangerous world and helping homo sapiens take "the step to Man." As psychoanalysts, we think individuals should be helped to the full realization of their humanity, but what does that mean? Where is humanity going, and how do the larger scientific and sociological problems correlate with current psychoanalytic practice?

While reading Platt's essays, it seemed to me that many of his ideas fit in which psychoanalytic experience, so I decided to review his book from the standpoint of the associations it evoked in my thinking. Other readers will probably be stimulated by different