This is not a conventional textbook in abnormal psychology and its probable rôle will be as pace-setter for some time to come. In contrast to prominent texts of the last decade, it ignores the 'disorders of psychological functions' and centers its organization around the problems of dynamics. The descriptive aridity of 'motor disorders', 'sensory disorders', and 'disorders of the emotions', gives way to such realistically oriented chapters as 'disturbances of the evaluation of the environment', 'disturbances of self-evaluation', and such etiological meat as 'origins of psychopathology in parent-child relationships'. This sharp diversion from custom is symptomatic of a reorientation in psychology as a whole, but it is not surprising that abnormal psychology should be the first to give concrete demonstration since the chief source of instigation to the change has been psychoanalysis.

The book shows the influence of a number of contemporary