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The work done at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Hospital in art periods once or twice a week as one aspect of a research project with behaviour problem children is recounted in detail. The six chapters which comprise this work had previously been published in four separate Journals. The problems presented by the children were: a 9-year-old compulsively destructive boy, a 9-year-old untruthful, truanting boy, a 11-year-old boy with tics, a 5-year-old aggressive boy, a 10-year-old boy with severe intellectual inhibition, and a 15-year-old, anxious, amnesic, hysterical girl. Ninety-nine drawings were reproduced.
The patients were all severely ill and were under active psychotherapy at the same time. Only occasionally is a connection between what happened in the art periods and the psychotherapeutic interviews with the psychiatrists given. The author stresses the value of 'spontaneity' and the 'creative process' in personality development and criticizes Freud (New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis) for 'emphasizing the protective value to the individual of the mechanism of repetition and the necessity of accepting education as of use in order to "inhibit", forbid and suppress'. Throughout the book there is considerable emphasis on spontaneity, creation, sublimations, and the emergence of archetypal forms, but this does not prevent a serious attempt to use the material provided to understand other unconscious processes.
This book will not add to the knowledge of child psycho-analysts, but nevertheless should be read by them as it is a book which will without doubt stimulate, inform and encourage many psychotherapists of children to more intensive work.