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Three points should be noted at once about this volume. The American connotation of “social psychiatry” differs from that current in England, and here it is used to mean the interrelations between psychiatry and the social sciences. Secondly, the book aims explicitly to state and clarify major issues in this field, rather than to answer basic questions. Thirdly, it came into being through the preliminary work of a Committee on Research in Psychiatry and the Social Sciences, sponsored by the Social Science Research Council, and consists of eleven main papers on subjects considered to make good portals of entry “into analytic discussion of the interplay of personality processes and social processes”. An effort, not altogether successful, is made to bring these papers together by editorial chapters, notes, and comments on the individual papers.
The quality of the papers is variable, and the differences in style make for uneven reading, but perseverance is worth while, for there is a great deal of interesting material in the book. The analyst-reader might well begin by taking the chapter by Gruenberg and Bellin on “The Impact of Mental Disease on Society”. In this we are reminded succinctly of the size of the problem, and its cost to a nation in suffering, expenditure, and waste; the authors continue to an interesting analysis of social responses to mental disorder, and a critical examination of the social sequels of the extension of the concept of mental disorder. Kubie gives us the most lucid and stimulating single contribution in the chapter “Social Forces and the Neurotic Process”. He sums up some of his previous