This summary of psychiatric nursing is written for students just entering the field. It is an adequate collection of the present day knowledge and technical methods of psychiatric nursing as practiced in the majority of hospitals in the United States.

Too much of the book is devoted to the average nurse's everyday knowledge of personal relationships and the physical aspects of custodial care.

Although there are some excellent descriptions of unconscious mechanisms scattered throughout they are inadequate in scope. Very little attempt is made to show the etiologic relationship of these mechanisms to the patient's symptoms.