The Psychology of Abnormal Behavior. A Dynamic Approach: By Louis P. Thorpe, Ph.D. and Barney Katz, Ph.D. New York: The Ronald Press Co., 1948. 877 pp.

This is one volume of a series in education, offered as a text for college and university courses. It follows closely the lesson pattern of a routine dissection; actually the approach is less dynamic than it is skilled—more technically objective than inspirationally subjective.

The authors, faculty members of the University of Southern

California, are identified with the Departments of Education and Psychology. The Psychology of Abnormal Behavior is an impressive example—well nigh akin to the classical—in which vast segments of professional endeavor are audited competently and comprehensively, by which recorded techniques are briefed and set apart conclusively, and for which a huge array of established works has been classified and codified directionally. It is well indexed (authors, cases, subjects), contains a reliable glossary, and at the end of chapters recommends generously readings of documental value. The encyclopedic scope (charts, graphs, illustration, tables, etc.) of this book suggests that this highly organized work be regarded as of value in orienting advanced students, with access to seminar discussions and instruction, and for diplomates preparing for examination. The authors are impartial, objective and concise. They appear more authoritatively tolerant of the organically interpreted aberrations in human behavior than of the functional manifestations of inhuman conduct exposed by analytic or psychosomatic scrutiny. Psychoanalysis is presented in thirty pages.