The author of this book, the first volume of what promises to be one of the most unconventional and interesting textbooks of psychiatry, belongs to an uncommon species of psychiatrist which is now becoming extinct. Their basic training included neurology and clinical psychiatry as well as psycho-analysis. As Chief of the Mental Health Section of the World Health Organization, Professor Krapf has an unrivalled knowledge of current trends in psychiatry all over the world. To write a textbook must be much more difficult for a man with his long and varied experience than for a representative of a particular school, however important. The author's orientation is not only multi-dimensional but also cosmopolitan. This is almost unique in psychiatry, where adherence to a school of thought is usually