Mental Disorders in Later Life: Edited by Oscar J. Kaplan. Stanford University, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1945. 436 pp.

This volume is a valuable and highly informative symposium on mental disorders in late life by sixteen authors. Some of the topics

overlap, particularly in nosology and pathology of the brain. Despite this, the chapters can be very serviceable as source material for reference. Appended to each chapter are numerous references.

The study of the psychological structure and development of the total personality of the adult gave the impetus to such understanding of the child as we now have. These studies have not been sufficiently extended to include a detailed consideration of the psychology and behavior of old age. Statistical studies show that increased expectancy of life is growing progressively and may be expected to continue. The elders cannot therefore be dismissed as an unprofitable liability in our society.

The chapters by Dunham on Sociological aspects of Mental Disorders in Later Life, and Jones and Kaplan on Psychological Aspects of Mental Disorders in Later Life are two of the most enlightening. The psychiatrist will find sufficient descriptive psychiatry and adequate pathological studies of organic brain lesions of the aged in his medical journals; but studies of the relationship of the psychology of the elderly people to changing social and economic forces are not easily found and are sorely needed. This problem is just beginning to be studied.

One investigator is not convinced that an adequate explanation of changes in behavior are mainly due to brain and vascular lesions and finds that difficulties in adaptation to changes in the social and economic forces may be even more powerful causes. Housing shortages, inadequate sensible and gratifying occupations, economic insecurity, economic crises with depressions, may need to be as carefully evaluated as have been organic brain changes. Types of personality and development need more study than have so far been given.

In a study of Alzheimer's Disease, it is recorded that only about one hundred and fif