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There is an urgent need for an up-to-date textbook of psychiatry. The authors of this impressive volume have attempted to fill this gap. They aim at a multidimensional approach which would give each factor contributing to mental illness its due place. They are very critical of the psycho-dynamic orientation of American and part of British psychiatry and have set their minds on stemming this trend. Of American psychiatry they present an incomplete picture. They quote extensively from a short and provocative article by Lidz written for German psychiatrists. (A book such as Dynamic Psychiatry, edited by Alexander and Ross, gives a much truer picture of the American psychiatry scene.) In discussing psycho-analysis they lean too heavily on critics who do not think much of its contribution to psychiatry. With all due respect for Jaspers, the Allgemeine Psychopathologie is not a reliable guide for those who want to make up their own minds on this issue. Nevertheless, the psychiatric reader will get good value from this book, provided he realizes that the time has gone by when one could expect any single writer, or team of writers sharing the same orientation, to present all the main currents in psychiatry fairly and authoritatively. It would be a pity if, as the result of its strong bias, the considerable merits of Clinical Psychiatry should not be appreciated by those readers who do not share the authors' views about recent trends in Western psychiatry. This reviewer has often emphasized that the descriptive-phenomenological, genetic, and psycho-dynamic approaches are not only compatible but complementary. It is to be hoped that this book will not be quoted in refutation of this opinion. Apart from the weaknesses inherent in a presentation such as this, the standard of the book is high, but the level of excellence is highest in the sections dealing with the subjects on which the authors are experts, and these are many. There is a useful list of references co