The Psychoanalysis of Elation: By Bertram D. Lewin, M.D. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1950.)

Morbid elation, in clinical psychiatry as well as in psycho-analytical nosology, is usually considered as a mere outcome of depression. In the Introduction to his book, The Psychoanalysis of Elation, Bertram D. Lewin points out correctly in a thoughtful introduction that clinical observation is not in accordance with such an assumption, as there are depressions without manic outcome and elation without any depressive counterparts. Such evidence of clinical observation alone justifies a study of elation per se, but there are also other reasons of a more general nature in favour of it. The concept, of course, or 'outcome' is alien to psycho-analytic thinking and is replaced by more complicated genetic and dynamic concepts, searching for the involved conditions of psychological equilibrium. The tacit acceptance of a tradition in non-analytic psychiatric systems may thus have blocked the way for discovering specific factors in elation. Lewin's study shows that disregard of such traditions leads to new discoveries. In this instructive and refreshing survey of the literature, Lewin