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The author of this book is known to the readers of this Journal from her previous publication, Studies of the 'Free' Art Expression of Behaviour Problem Children and Adolescents as a Means of Diagnosis and Therapy. In the present volume she has extended her researches and observations to patients suffering from psychotic mental illnesses.
She has introduced her clinical material, which makes the bulk of the book, with an interesting and adequate survey of the literature on psychotic and neurotic art. Her personal emphasis is on the importance of symbolism, and she has tried with eclectic objectivity to compare the attitude towards it of psycho-analysts and Jungian analysts. The author stresses the view that 'an interior experience of imaged symbols consistently reduced to words' loses some of its dynamic vitality. This leads Miss Naumberg to emphasize the clinical value of encouraging patients to make their own interpretations of their material: 'for it is on the basis of each patient's response to his own symbolic creations that the importance of using spontaneous art projections as a primary mode of therapy can be established'.
Miss Naumberg considers the symbolic crystallization of the patient's inner experience and its expression through painting, the chief therapeutic agent in these treatments. Her approach to the understanding of the symbols is essentially 'archetypal' in character. She exploits their content towards the understanding of the patient's problem and neglects the dynamics of the chaotic experience and emotions achieving the solid shape of symbols. One cannot help noticing the happy facility these patients exhibit of getting all their experiences so easily embodied in dramatic symbolic paintings. The author stresses this as an achievement of her technique, whereas the reviewer considers it rather in the light of a defensive mechanism. We are very familiar with the type of patient who feeds his analyst with fat dreams full of meat because he