This work, for the French reader, is, says its author, 'a succinct résumé of the mass of studies published in the American scientific press' on the treatments of mental diseases, and indeed the author does touch upon quite a heterogeneous mass of treatments beginning with the various shocks, proceeding to leucotomy, then to those multiple physiopharmacological techniques of which he reviews no fewer than thirteen, including vitamins and the anticytotoxic serum of Bogomoletz (which he calls cytotoxic serum), and concluding with notes on wartime psychiatry. It is not easy for the reader to orient himself. On page 55, the psychoanalyst will certainly be surprised to be told: 'The advantage of electric shock for the psychoanalysts who, on the whole, remain hostile to shock treatment, is that the patient hates the treatment, but not the doctor and that, according to Moriarty, makes the transference easy'; or, 'The absence of the superego prevents the formation of internal conflicts, therefore of psychoses' (p. 64). Such erroneous ideas on psychoanalysis cannot satisfy the reader.