Beyond the Clinical Frontiers: By Edward A. Strecker, M.D. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1940. 210 pp.

This book is comprised of the Thomas W. Salmon Memorial Lectures given by the author. 'If Salmon were alive today, he would be busily engaged in mobilizing psychiatric resources into a plan designed to repair some of the wounds which have been inflicted upon a confused and disorganized society… He would not think of the problems that are harassing our civilization in terms of formalized and rigid psychiatric concepts. He would realize at once that the economic, political, social, cultural, and ethical upheavals perplexing a sorely tried and tired world are placed beyond the frontiers of clinical psychiatry. Nevertheless, he would observe and comment upon the striking resemblances between everyday individual and mass behavior and the common phenomena of psychotic and psychoneurotic disorders. And he would strive, unceasingly, to make some helpful social applications of psychiatry and mental hygiene.' This is the aim of the book and the spirit in which it is written. In the first part, the emphasis falls chiefly upon the element of reality evasion which is seen in the neuroses and psychoses and which the author points out in everyday life as well. The book does not fully develop, however, just what realities most generally significant for human suffering are evaded. The phenomenon of the 'crowd man', is then described, especially in regard to release of instinct, particularly aggression, and the decrease of reason and control when the individual becomes influenced by the crowd. The treatment is descriptive for the most part. The author deplores the rise of crowd psychology but the reasons for this rise are not intensively discussed. Then follows a full discussion of mental hygiene, its need and feasibility. The author's hope and expectation is that with time mental hygiene will become as effective as physical hygiene now is, and he draws an interesting and encouraging parallel between the two. He stresses the importance for any mental hygiene of emotiona