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A systematic text on child psychiatry from a British source is much to be welcomed, and Dr. Soddy's work is derived from more than twenty years of broad experience in the field. His approach is developmental, and the first part of the book consists of useful chapters on “Heredity or Environment”, “The Human Family”, and “Growing Up in
a Family”. Part II deals with gestation and parturition, and will be of particular use to those members of a child guidance team who lack a groundwork in biology.
The following five parts describe child development from the nursing period through to adolescence; for each stage the commoner patterns of aberrant development are described, and illustrated with detailed case studies. In his comments upon these, Dr. Soddy's clinical acumen shows to advantage, as it does in the next part in which a number of case histories are presented to illustrate disorder of family relationships.
In Part IX, Child Guidance, Dr. Soddy gives us first a chapter on “The Main Clinical Syndromes”, based on the time classification. Next comes a description of examination procedure, diagnosis, and disposal in the Child Guidance Clinic. Although the seriousness of advising removal of a child from his home on psychiatric grounds is acknowledged, this disposal is covered by a few brief paragraphs; it is a pity that a writer of Dr. Soddy's authority missed the opportunity for a detailed and definitive statement on the indications of this manœuvre. Part IX closes with a chapter on the principles of child psychotherapy, which includes brief reference to the roles of the child psychotherapist, the psychiatric social worker, and the educational psychologist.
Part X consists of some general statements on the popular but thorny question of preventive mental hygiene.
This book will be useful to students and practitioners of child psychiatry, and holds much of interest for pædicatricians, general practitioners, and public health officers. Its attempt at comprehensiveness, and