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Dr. Wechsler has followed up his Text-book of Clinical Neurology by one devoted to the neuroses. In the present state of the medical curriculum, a text-book which will put before the student in a simple form the modern theory of the neuroses is very necessary.
A satisfactory feature of Dr. Wechsler's book is that, although he gives most modern views, he stresses throughout the psycho-analytic method and theory. Dr. Wechsler adopts the usual method of presentation of clinical medicine, dealing in separate chapters with the mechanisms, etiology, classification, clinical manifestations, diagnosis and treatment of the group of diseases under consideration. Like the great majority of text-books, this one suffers from over-simplification and its attendant evils. The pedagogic demand for definition has resulted in that type of error which it is least easy to nail down: the distortion arising from loss of context. There is no actual misrepresentation of psycho-analytical theory, and yet there is an unreality in many of his descriptions, which leaves a very unsatisfactory impression on anyone who has had clinical experience of the neuroses.
At the end of his book Dr. Wechsler gives a very good brief bibliography as a guide in their reading for students and general practitioners interested in the subject.