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Dr. Schilder is well known as an exceptionally able psychiatrist and in this book he presents a work of considerable usefulness. Its chief value lies in its breadth of approach. The author writes in a masterly fashion on such matters as psycho-physiological relations and the symptomatology of organic disease.
The treatment of psycho-analysis is less satisfactory and is evidently portrayed from the outside. The description of the technique in itself betrays this. One is supposed to start an analysis by asking the patient to tell the history of his life. The next sentence to this contains the incompatible remark that 'the basic rule of free association has, of course, to be told to him at first.' We are told that 'in acute situations the analyst should refrain as much as possible from giving advice', but we are not told whether this applies to acute situations only. Dr. Schilder's attitude in general towards psycho-analysis is a cool one. He writes: 'In practising psycho-analysis one has to keep in mind the fact that the method has still not been tried on a sufficiently large number of cases. The present technique is cumbersome, expensive, and is very often handled with an unnecessary rigidity.' Thirty years' work on the patients of hundreds of psycho-analysts has not made any deep impression on the author. This remark, however, is followed, in the usual ambivalent fashion, by another which says: 'However, the method is indispensable and Freud's