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This is a very stimulating logical analysis of the concepts of psychological health and illness, undertaken with thoroughness and many digressions into various problems of the logic of science. Hollitscher starts out with a discussion of the concept of 'reaction norm' as used in genetics. He then discusses those 'reaction norms' which constitute 'illness' or 'health' in biology and general medicine, quoting the various familiar definitions. Among these he favors that of Lenz, who defines health in terms of 'adjustment to the environment' but he also allows for other possibilities such as a greater consideration of the state of adjustment of the species and less of the individual, and a consideration of how the organism feels, whether well or badly. Then Hollitscher proceeds to investigate the concepts of psychological function and dysfunction as a special case of biological function and dysfunction. He describes and justifies the fact that psychology introduces new concepts 'which are formed by a simple and transparent extension of those used in everyday language', and exemplifies this with instances from reflexology and psychoanalysis. Finally he brings together what has been said about 'health' and about 'psychological function' in order to discuss 'psychological health'. He summarizes: 'A person is "psychologically ill" if his adjustment to his environment is disturbed; if, in consequence, the probability of his maintaining life is lowered, compared to that of his fellows, who are well adjusted; and if this is the result of a pathological disturbance of his psychological behavior. By a "pathological" disturbance of psychological behavior, we mean that it deviates from the same person's behavior when he was still adjusted and healthy, at which time he was in no other respect different from now.'
Hollitscher adds, however, that this definition requires additions and qualifications, insofar as the question 'what is psychological' may be answered not only acc