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This book, unpretentious in title, size, and style, is an inspiring document which the reviewer recommends unreservedly. It reports the first nine years of operation of the William Hodson Community Center, a day center for old people, which was set up as an experiment to determine what could be done by professional recreational group work to meet the problems of the aging. The success of this project is shown by the establishment of other centers patterned upon it throughout the country. The authors are case workers who have an excellent grasp of psychoanalytic principles but refreshingly do not indulge in 'psychoanalese'. They present a remarkably lucid picture of their early trials and repeated frustrations, the development of new insights and techniques, and the transformation of collections of old people into integrated groups. This integration was accompanied by the unpredictable improvement of many of the previously 'hopeless' individuals in the groups. The brief histories of some of these people, the accounts of their acting out and their reactions to the therapeutic influence of the group, and the descriptions of techniques used by the group leader are models of writing which might be studied most profitably by anyone.
The authors' awareness of socioeconomic factors, while not specifically expounded, gives their presentation a balance conspicuously lacking in the writings of those who cannot see beyond biology and psychodynamics as determinants of human development and behavior.
The reviewer's enthusiam cannot do justice to the book without extensive quotation; the following specimens give a fair picture of