The Troubled Mind: By Harry Roberts, with chapters on The Insanities, by Margaret Nelson Jackson. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1939. 284 pp.

The authors state in the preface that this book 'should be regarded as an attempt to explain, in simple language, some of the outstanding conclusions of contemporary psychologists, with such criticism as the experience of the authors suggests. One of us has been engaged in general medical practice for several decades; the other has for many years been a medical officer at a hospital devoted to the care of mental abnormals. Such constitutes whatever authority we have.'

Unfortunately, the promise of simple readable language is not kept. By the time one reaches page 2, one finds that the author's sentences are long, involved and clumsy, and that it is often necessary to study a sentence in order to extract its meaning. The author's use of idiom and the vernacular are somewhat strange and unfamiliar. One finally discovers through the idiom, the spelling and the material in the last chapter which deals with commitment procedure, that the author is British. It is curious that the publishers give no biographical data concerning the author, and force the reader to become a literary Sherlock Holmes to discover in what part of the world the book was written.

In the first two chapters, dealing with the definition of mind and psychophysical relationships, we find an interesting discussion stressing the need for an enlightened and eclectic psychological and psychosomatic approach to mental problems. The author states: 'It is mind that gives a purposive turn to the physical processes of our bodies'. He considers that mind is something that pervades even the individual cells and he cites 'the remarkable discriminatory activities of such cells, for example, as those which line our intestines and the tubules of our kidneys'. These chapters offer promise of a book which may be stimulating and original.

However, the chapter on the unconscious mind disillusions the reader and suggests that the author does not have a profound understanding of human psychology. The ensuing chapte