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The National Research Council of America, regarding the knowledge and treatment of mental disorder as unsatisfactory, are attempting to see what they can do about it 'by undertaking an inventory of the scientific support which may now profitably be used to extend knowledge of the disorders and of the best ways and means to direct the arts of diagnosis and therapy'.
Hence they present first a symposium by 'representative men in the various schools and branches of psychiatry'. Macfie Campbell describes the clinical view, Myerson the medical, Wechsler the neurological, Adolf Meyer the psychobiological and Kubie the psychoanalytical. Of these the first three would regard and investigate the mental patient as an ordinary medical case, Campbell also laying stress on the previous environment of the patient and its effect upon his psychology, while the neurologist insists on an understanding of the nervous system in its reciprocal relations with bodily organs. Although Wechsler anticipates that current psychology will ultimately 'turn out to be plain gibberish', he honestly admits that 'psycho-analysis has been the most important contribution to psychiatry for the past two or three decades'. Meyer's contribution is rather of philosophical nature; he is a behaviourist and along these lines believes in making a study of 'the whole man' in his social relationships. Kubie gives a clear presentation of the psychoanalytical view, but it is unfortunate that he gives no indication of the flood of light which psycho-analysis has already thrown on the nature of mental disease.
The rest and greater part of the book consists of twenty chapters on the 'Supporting Sciences', each by an expert in his particular branch. Here we have articles on cerebral anatomy, physiology, electrophysiology, neurocytology, chemistry, metabolism, endocrinology, genetics, experimental psychology, anthropology and so forth, all of which show evidence that they—in common with all other sciences—have made