Syllabus of Psychiatry: A Guide to General Orientation: By Leland H. Hinsie. New York: State Hospitals Press, 1933. 348 p.

This book is an attempt to review the more important trends in modern psychiatry with more particular reference to the constitutional background of psychopathic states. The writer gives evidence of a wide knowledge of psychiatric literature. His review is, however, completely uncritical and attempts no evaluation of the various theories and views cited, some of which are very divergent.

The treatment of psychoanalysis is unfortunate. The author is primarily interested in "conclusions", rather than in the evidence upon which they are based and appears, therefore, to have been fascinated in particular by the life and death instincts and the structure of the personality. His treatment of these topics is exceedingly popular, with even some sacrifice of accuracy to popularity of presentation, but there is no citation of clinical material to make clear what psychoanalytic formulations mean in terms of actual life. Anyone not already familiar with psychoanalytic literature must receive the impression of an unwieldy structure of theoretical concepts with little or no relation to the facts of real life. Such an impression is most unfortunate and misleading inasmuch as the basic contribution of psychoanalysis has been its ability to understand psychopathic phenomena in terms of real human motives.