Child Psychology: Psychologic Care during Infancy and Childhood. By R. M. Bakwin and H. Bakwin. (D. Appleton-Century Company, New York and London, 1942. Pp. xv + 317.)

In this book the Doctors Bakwin stress the common sense approach to the wide range of psychopathological disorders in childhood. It is chiefly the pediatrician whom they are attempting to orient in this field, but the nurse, social worker and more intelligent parent are also kept in mind. Controversial mechanisms are avoided and simplification is the keynote, possibly with the effect, particularly in the presentation of therapeutic procedures, of seeming somewhat dogmatic. The importance of growth, development and the maturational sequence in evaluating and handling children's problems is kept in the foreground. The child's need for love and affection is presented as an organic requirement and stressed throughout. Unique in this presentation is a discussion of the emotional overtones accompanying many of the childhood illnesses ordinarily thought of in terms of their purely physical aspects—conditions such as coeliac disease, squint, etc. One might wish, however, since the parent is included in the potential audience of this work, that the relative normality of certain phenomena, such as fears phobias, and suicidal preoccupations in children had been mentioned in the discussions of these topics. On the whole the authors offer an objective, conservative approach to children's emotional problems with which to supplement the armamentarium of those who work with children, particularly those whose activity in these aspects of the field has been limited because of unfamiliarity with the terms involved or because of a suspicion of the theoretical bases encountered.