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Every analyst who has had occasion to teach psychoanalytic concepts to medical students and social workers is familiar with the many difficulties this entails. Considerable pedagogical skill is needed to convey analytic ideas to a group of beginners without distorting them beyond recognition. This volume is a valuable contribution to such teaching.
Neurosis and Psychosis is a textbook of psychiatry written from
the psychoanalytic point of view. It is based on a series of lectures which the author has given for some years to medical and postgraduate students of the University of Illinois College of Medicine. An introductory chapter presents a brief statement of the basic analytic ideas on the structure of human personality. Subsequent chapters describe the major neuroses and psychoses. A final chapter is devoted to a general discussion of psychosomatic medicine. There is a bibliography at the end of each chapter; most of the references are from the psychoanalytic literature.
Dr. Bosselman has done an outstanding piece of work in this book. Her style is lucid and she has mastered the difficult art of saying complicated things clearly. Although they are very brief, little exception can be taken to her descriptions of the clinical symptomatology and dynamics of the common emotional diseases. The introductory chapter on basic concepts is, in my opinion, exactly as it should be for the group to whom this book is addressed. The fact that the book is organized on the plan generally used in medical texts should give the student a sense of being on at least partly familiar grounds; this is no small advantage in presenting a subject whose content must necessarily seem very strange to the beginner. The author's effort throughout is to present the 'logic' of the neurotic or psychotic syndrome, to show the student the meaning and purpose of symptoms. In this I think she succeeds admirably.
There are some minor ways in which the book falls short. A more generous use o