The major theme and general purpose of this book [according to the authors] is to present a general and yet definitive description and critique of the literature of emotional adjustment in mental retardation. It represents a major effort to define, analyze, and reconstruct past and present thinking regarding the problems imposed by mental retardation and adaptive behavior; the prevalence of emotional disturbance when it is connected with retardation; the historical aspects of some of the problems associated with emotional disturbances and retardation [p. 3].

The book includes a review of a variety of psychotherapies that are used as remedial techniques with emotionally disturbed retardates. The literature related to psychoanalysis and the retarded shows the psychoanalytic system as “a descriptive