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This book is written for the general physician to help him 'to differentiate between those patients who present mental symptoms and who can really benefit by psychotherapy, and those who present similar symptoms or diseases which must be recognized as not amenable to this form of treatment, though they may be treated by other methods.' Chapters are devoted to several conditions: psychoneuroses, psychosomatic conditions, temperamental instabilities, visceral neuroses, endocrine conditions, psychoses, mental deficiencies, psychopathic personalities, etc.
The various types of psychotherapy are enumerated in the introductory chapter which deals also with the development of psychotherapy. It contains a short account of the development of medical psychology from Charcot to Freud, Jung and Adler with some paragraphs on the various attempts which were made to shorten treatment. Some space is devoted to the attitude of the general public and the medical profession to psycho-analysis. The public's sceptical and antagonistic attitude is attributed to the exaggerated claims of psycho-analysts, and in the authors' view this attitude changed, post or propter hoc, after the report by the 1929 British Medical Association Committee on psycho-analysis. In this, and in many other remarks, the authors show their attitude to unconscious processes. For instance, in the chapter on psychoneuroses, where the significance of the transference situation is mentioned, they speak about the Oedipus complex which they 'not uncommonly' find in their patients, but usually in a modified and attenuated form. They reject the Oedipus situation as of general occurrence, considering another situation to be much more fundamental and important, namely that of loss of maternal love and protection. The crucial point of the psychotherapy they advise is formulated in these words: 'It is the duty of the psychotherapist to bring the patient to see the loss has been more imagined than real. …' The approa