Modern Trends in Child Psychiatry: Edited by Nolan D. C. Lewis, M.D., and Bernard L. Pacella, M.D. New York: International Universities Press, 1945. 341 pp.

In a preface, Dr. Lewis and Dr. Pacella state that the book is from a series of lectures on Child Psychiatry and Child Guidance

given at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Hospital during the years 1943 and 1944, and that it is their purpose to make accessible the most recent thought, investigations and achievements in child psychiatry. This is a good purpose, since child psychiatry has not become established as an independent discipline in medical teaching, and the student who becomes interested in psychiatric work with children must seek widely through the literature for a perspective and a general orientation, more widely indeed than can be expected of the average student. Therefore, a collection of seminar presentations with a bibliography on the more important aspects of diagnostic and treatment procedures in child psychiatry by individuals, who on the whole are in the forefront of achievement in these respective fields, offers an acceptable addition to the recommended reading list for students who are gaining their first experience with psychiatric problems of children, especially in medicine, psychology and social service.

Considering the fact that psychiatry for children has hardly yet won its place as a recognized discipline in its own right, the title, Modern Trends, is somewhat misleading. To be sure, the early preoccupation of psychiatrists, with children as well as adults, of management or custodial care of the grossly retarded or abnormal individuals, is omitted. But included are the psychoanalysis of children (play therapy), the Rorschach test, group therapy, and the electroencephalogram, with nowhere, however, any historical note pointing to the origin, development and interrelationship of trends. This is merely by way of saying that a more appropriate title might have been Various Aspects of Child Psychiatry.

This collection of seminars is an important documentation of an ambitious teaching program in a field which presents special te