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By Anton T. Boisen. New York and Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press. 159 pp.
RELIGION UND PSYCHOTHERAPIE. By Dr. Graf Igor A. Caruso. Innsbruck, Austria: Buchdruckerei Tyrolia A. G., 1946. 16 pp.
Boisen's small book, as the explanatory inscription states on the cover, is a 'manual for pastors, with outlines for coöperative study of personal experience in social situations.' It is written in simple style and packed with much good advice for churchmen of different denominations. More than this, it presents in terse yet comprehensive form a view of the minister's (Presbyterian) present day function in the community. Its attitude toward current psychiatric and psychoanalytic practice is sympathetic and enlightened, although it does not pretend to enter into controversial issues. Occasionally there are prejudicial remarks or misstatements about concepts as when, for instance, in regard to conscience, it is stated that this 'is not the rigid superego of the freudians, which needs to be broken up or eradicated, like a vermiform appendix, but the subjective aspect of culture, the internalization within the individual of the social organization which enable him to direct his own life without external compulsion …'; but these defects do not mar the value of the general aim which is to inculcate an attitude toward the client which in essence resembles that of the analyst toward his patient. 'Counseling' is preferred to 'Psychotherapy' to denote the limitation of clerical practice, but healing by faith is clearly distinguished from healing by insight, and the latter is strongly advocated.
Boisen does not sharply distinguish between the relative positions of psychotherapy and religious healing, of scientific knowledge and faith. He does not confront the reader with such an antithesis, but guides him gently to the assumption that some relationship between the two exists. His attitude toward religion is mostly undogmatic and includes an active participation in bettering