Mental Hygiene—The Psychology of Personal Adjustment: By D. B. Klein. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1944. 498 pp.

Klein states the purpose of his book is the orientation of the beginning student in psychiatry or clinical psychology and the information of the interested general reader. He has not succeeded well in either aim.

Not only does he present methods of treatment poorly, but even his clinical descriptions of psychoses and psychoneuroses are not clear. Thus, the circular type of manic depressive psychosis is described according to the viewpoint of the older textbooks and is implied to be more common than observed by present-day clinicians. His delineation of hysteria is also outmoded and differs little from his definition of malingering. His presentation of schizophrenia is prolix and lacks vitality; naïvely enough, the disease is described as complex only to the naïve observer. He resurrects the term psychasthenia to include compulsion neurosis, which he fails to recognize as a clinical entity.

Klein's understanding of psychoanalysis is exceedingly superficial. In general he finds its theories untenable, which is not surprising since he shows little understanding of the more important psychoanalytic formulations and their clinical applications. For this reason the book contains little appreciation of the etiological dynamics of the neuroses and psychoses.