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This book attempts to summarize and compare not only the main trends in psychopathology but also related work in psychology, criminology, education, sociology, ethnology, ethics, literature, etc. It is not surprising that within the limits of less than two hundred fifty pages it succeeds in giving only a bare outline of the theoretical framework of a considerable number of systems of psychopathology. Theoretical formulations, however, have no life and reality when divorced from the phenomena they are devised to explain; and the author's brief synopses will be intelligible, accordingly, in proportion to the reader's previous knowledge of the topics discussed. They should be chiefly valuable, as a sort of annotated bibliography "to indicate" as the author himself hopes "directions in which further reading might prove profitable and interesting". The spirit of these short reviews is very fair and not altogether uncritical, though the critical evaluations expressed are not so much discussions of real issues as comments upon the consistency of theoretical systems, and one feels a much too facile and superficial urge to bring conflicting systems into harmony with each other.
The treatment of psychoanalysis is very friendly and gives evidence of a good understanding of psychoanalytic literature,