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The table of contents of this book is an excellent summary of what students in medicine, nursing, and social work ought to know about clinical psychology. Unfortunately, the book itself does not sufficiently bear out the promise of the table of contents.
The author is neither original enough to be stimulating, nor sufficiently orthodox to be dependable. He tries to cover far too much ground with the result that he fails to be definitive in any one aspect of his subject. His chief virtue lies in bringing together material not usually found within the compass of a single volume; but this advantage is rather offset by his poor presentation of the less controversial subjects, such as test results and cognitive factors, and by confusion worse confounded in the presentation of the more controversial material, especially affective factors. Throughout there is a lack of differential definitions and a failure to trace cause and effect relationships beyond the first superficial level of explanation.
The chapter on Test Results—Interpretation and Statistical Considerations is well conceived in that it selects important concepts for discussion, but the method of explanation would inevitably be confusing to a student. For instance, the author attempts to explain such terms as mode, frequency distribution, standard deviation and probable error without so much as a reference to a