This fine nursing text is carefully introduced with a warm appreciation of the problems worrying the new psychiatric nurse. Ideal goals are outlined and rewards promised for the interested student.

The initial chapter on the history of psychiatry is an adequate survey from prehistoric trepanning to Freud who 'brought psychiatry as a living subject to the attention of every intelligent man and woman'.

Chapter III, The Structure of the Personality, sketches the rudiments of Freud's libido theory, identifies the id, ego and sugerego, and explains such other concepts as introversion, extroversion, etc. The description of the growing personality is continued in the next chapter with clear, definitive explanations of the most commonly used dynamisms such as rationalization, sublimation, repression, projection, identification. A discussion of psychosomatic medicine introduces a chapter on the causes and classification of mental diseases.