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This well-known work is passing the stage of being a standard textbook and is rapidly becoming one of the classics of British psychiatry. Since the last edition (reviewed in this JOURNAL, Vol. III, p. 84) many changes have been introduced. These mostly concern general psychiatry, but fairly adequate notice is also taken of the advances made in psycho-analysis.
There are a few detailed suggestions we should like to put forward for
the author's consideration. In the excellently full chapter on manicdepressive insanity there could have been more extensive consideration of cyclothymia. Dr. Stoddart's consulting practice in borderland cases would enable him to give many useful hints on the differential diagnosis of this condition, one which is too often confounded with psychoneurosis proper. The psycho-analytical pathology, though correct, is much too condensed, and we doubt if the reader would gather with satisfactory clearness the importance of the fact that a melancholiac's complaints about himself really relate to another person. The name of Abraham might well be mentioned by the side of Freud in this connection (p. 301).
In paranoia more emphasis could have been laid on the extensive part played by the projection mechanism. Incidentally the Schreber analysis is dated as being twenty years old instead of fifteen (p. 312). We think the author would have been justified in being more encouraging about the prospects of psycho-analytic treatment with both paranoia and dementia præcox. In discussing the psychopathology of dementia præcox no mention is made of the auto-erotic fixation that probably underlies the introversion and the detachment from object-relationships (p. 331).
We note that the word 'censure' is wrongly given as the translation of the German 'Zensur, ' instead of 'censorship' (p. 180). Too much space is still given to the older methods of treatment of hysteria, and undue stress is laid on the difficulty due to the expense by psycho-analytic treatm