You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Every year a series of lectures is given by some outstanding psychiatrists at the New York Academy of Medicine in the memory of Thomas Salmon, a great pioneer in American psychiatry. One of the most important achievements of Dr. Salmon was his contribution to the organization and direction of the mental hygiene movement which has meant a great deal for psychiatry the world over. It may be assumed that these lectures do not follow the trends of orthodox psychiatry, but throw light on those disciplines with which psychiatry has close contact such as sociology, criminology, education, etc. This can be judged from the selection of such lecturers as Healy and Orton whose primary interests are delinquency and education respectively.
The present lectures deal with psychopathic states, the most baffling problem in psychiatry, criminology and law. The author, Dr. D. K. Henderson, is one of the leading pupils of Adolf Meyer, who has been responsible for the introduction of the principle of psychobiology into British psychiatry. The first lecture is entitled Place in Psychiatry and it deals with the problem of the psychopathic personality in its historical perspective. The author very wisely avoids a definition except in terms of social difficulties. The second chapter deals with the clinical aspect of the problem, and the third chapter outlines the author's recommendations.
The lectures are very easy to follow. They make pleasant and entertaining reading, and they must have been fun to hear. From the very beginning one is distressed by the extreme superficiality with which the subject is handled. It looks as though the author read quite a few references, pulled out a few interesting cases from his private files and the hospital record room, and then proceeded to express his thoughts on this interesting subject. Here and there he is fascinated by the ideas of various men, and he likes to quote Kahn who noticed that the hysterical patient is frequently egocentric and e