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This book is written primarily for the medical student and the general practitioner. It attempts to bring together the essential psycho-analytic material dealing with the more common neuroses of children and adults. While it deals casually with other approaches to these problems its essential orientation is to the rôle Freudian psycho-analysis plays in the understanding and treatment of the neuroses.
The book has many virtues. It reads easily. It is essentially clinically
oriented. It gives adequate pictures of the disease constellations and presents valuable aids to differential diagnosis. The indications for various types of psychotherapy are given in connection with each type of disturbance. The general concepts underlying their use are given ample attention. There are many practical suggestions as to the non-analytic handling of therapeutic problems. The references given are broadly chosen.
The authors' bias is distinctly toward psycho-analysis as the therapeutic method of choice. Occasionally they seem somewhat over-optimistic in their advocacy of its use as, for example, the implied promise of cure for the psychopathic personalities.
The procedure of psycho-analysis is only discussed briefly in the chapter on neurasthenia, although its general tenets are presented throughout the book. There is little description of child analysis, although its use is advocated in the hands of properly-trained individuals.
The psychiatric problems of childhood are considered under the general headings: Anxiety States, Psychogenic Disturbances of Physiological Functions and Disturbances of Social Adaptation. The adult neuroses, however, are not clearly pictured in status nascendi as they might well be in a book dealing with disturbances both of childhood and adult life. Perhaps in future editions a clearer picture of the developing neuroses can be presented.
In a book designed for medical students and general practitioners it is obvious that choices of theoretical for