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Had this substantial volume been published without a title, most readers would close it with the impression that it was intended as a compendium of psychoanalysis; for with the exception of two chapters, one on the principles of psychiatric treatment and the other on some relationships between social anthropology and psychiatry, the book consists almost exclusively of a general account of psychoanalytic concepts and theories, a review of the application of these concepts and theories in the field of clinical psychiatry, and a broad assessment of the influence of psychoanalysis on psychosomatic medicine, clinical psychology, animal psychology and contemporary thought, including among this last the fields of religion, literature and economics.
Apparently this was not the first intention of the editors, who not only elected for the title Dynamic Psychiatry but maintain in their introduction that dynamic psychiatry is a new and multidisciplined science, the outgrowth of a 'sixfold scientific cross-fertilization' between clinical psychiatry proper, social psychiatry, experimental psychology, animal psychology, psychosomatic medicine, and child psychiatry. Further, the editors hold that the advent of this dynamic psychiatry is liquidating the isolated existence of psychoanalysis.
These claims put the psychoanalytic reviewer in something of a quandary. If he takes the editors at their word, it is his duty to give the reader some brief outline of the new science. And here he is handicapped by the fact that whereas the principles and methods of psychoanalysis are exhaustively set forth in this book, there is only the most sketchy account of the theories and practices of the other disciplines, with the possible exception of the section on social anthropology which, being written by Margaret Mead, gives