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This book provides a short but comprehensive and carefully planned account of psycho-analysis for the use of medical practitioners. It may be read with advantage by analysts and candidates in training, but it should be remembered that it is addressed in the first place to readers with no special knowledge of the subject. In the author's own words: 'It is hoped that the present outline will give the practitioner some idea of the existing scope and future possibilities of this science.' Hence, 'no attempt is made to argue the validity of psycho-analytic views or to give the evidence on which they are based. The terms used or definitions given are those which have stood the test of time.' The primary aim is to give simple non-controversial information calculated to assist doctors in assessing and prescribing for mental disorders in their patients.
The practical intention of the book is evident throughout, a survey of general theory being undertaken as a necessary preliminary to specifically clinical considerations. Thus the book is divided into an Introductory Chapter and three Sections. Section I consists of seven chapters on basic theory, leading up to dreams and symptom formation, Section II of seven chapters on clinical syndromes, including psycho-sexual disorders, social difficulties and the psycho-analysis of children. Section III contains a vital chapter on practical applications, with a list of key books for further reading and a short but adequate index.
The Introductory Chapter gives in a nutshell the cardinal points of the Freudian conception of mind as an apparatus for the regulation of instinctual excitations and of the three-fold approaches, topographic, dynamic and economic that 'are essential to the full understanding of every mental event'. It contains an excellently simple differentiation between normal and abnormal results of economic processes. 'Some of these economic manoeuvres have satisfactory results; others have not. When the result i