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In offering this small volume to the public the author has condensed in a small space most of the essential concepts of modern psychiatry, and has presented them in a manner which is both original and entertaining.
In the first chapter, after exploding some old fallacies, he calls attention to the basic interest of psychiatry in the ancient laws of cause and effect, and so claims for it a scientific approach. He then goes on to sketch the biological concept of behavior.
In touching upon conversion symptoms he stresses the fact that a psychiatrist must first be a trained physician, and points out that symptoms may come from disturbed nervous transmission or from misinterpretation of the messages delivered. He pauses for a moment to pay tribute to the influence of physical illness or differences upon emotional development.
The second half of the book is devoted largely to the consideration of various disabilities, or symptoms, as examples of man's attempt to defend himself against his fellow man. In discussing projection he points out the narrow margin which separates certain 'normal' people from those with definitely paranoid ideas. Similarly, in speaking of the mechanism of retiring into oneself as a means of defense, he points out how closely related such a mechanism is to that seen in more pronounced form in true schizophrenia. These mechanisms he classifies as 'turtle defense'. The