Schools of Psychoanalytic Thought. An Exposition, Critique, and Attempt at Integration: By Ruth L. Munroe. (New York: The Dryden Press, 1955. Pp. xvi + 670. $7.50.)

This book was commissioned by the Dryden Press as one of its Publications in Interpersonal Relations to provide students, social workers, social scientists, etc., with accurate information and 'with help in forming an unbiased judgment among the clamorous, quarrelsomely different schools currently thought of as psychoanalytic'. The choice of author was fortunate in all respects. Ruth L. Munroe is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the City College of New York, with some fifteen years teaching experience behind her, and has a private practice of diagnostic testing for psychiatrists of many different schools together with consultation and guidance work. She is the wife of a practising psycho-analyst, Dr. Bela Mittelmann, and has herself some personal experience of both 'orthodox' and 'Horney' analysis. Thus, although she calls herself an 'outsider', her opportunities for acquiring information and making contact with workers in the differing 'schools' are unrivalled, and she has made the most of them. Each section of the book has been scrutinized by competent members of the 'school' concerned. The kind of précis-writing necessary in a book of this scope is never entirely satisfactory, but, judging by the treatment of 'Freud and the "Freudians"' (Part Two), the accounts given are sound and any errors are errors of inevitable omission rather than of commission. Her account of criticism received is significant: 'The few specialist readers who have read my account of schools other than their own seem to have two reactions: (1) My report of their school is good, so good that they become annoyed with me for not driving home the ideas they consider most important for any honest psychological science. If the report is this good, why can't it be still better—on their terms? (2) My account of the other schools is inaccurate, they say, because I read my own intelligence into them, with insufficient knowledge of their history and actual practice.' To which last her un