Les Théories Psychosomatiques. Origines Psychanalytiques—Importance Psychologique (Psychosomatic Theories. Psychoanalytic Origins—Psychological Significance): By Jean-Paul Valabrega. Introduction by Dr. Henry Ey. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954. 192 pp.

The value of this book lies in the attempt to locate the place of psychosomatic medicine somewhere at the crossroads of psychoanalysis,

psychology, and somatic medicine, the latter especially expressed in the syndrome of stress, adaptation, and endocrinological response. The author defends, with good reasons, the monistic viewpoint that psychosomatic medicine is not a liaison science, but that the central importance of psychosomatics is to be found in the organism itself.

In the first chapter, Valabrega describes the relationship between psychosomatics and psychoanalytic evolution. He opposes the critical attitude of Marie Bonaparte, who tries to keep certain analytical concepts as clearly as possible separated from the general psychosomatic approach. On the other hand, the description of the work of Sacha Nacht clarifies the relationship between psychoanalysis and psychosomatics. Extremely illuminating is the comparison between Explication Specifique (specific explanation) and Explication Plaquée (schematic explanation). He acknowledges the corrective self-criticism of the psychosomatic school as represented by Alexander, Weiss, English, and Dunbar, and discusses extensively the shortcomings of psychosomatic treatment outside psychoanalysis. The work of Margolin is regarded as an outstanding experimental model of investigation in the psychosomatic field.

Much space is given to the future psychoanalytic training of physicians in which the author gets lost in wishful thinking. As nobody else has offered anything better, Valabrega at least does justice to each theoretical approach of the didactic psychoanalytic problem. In the chapter about the psychosomatic conception of illness versus psychosomatic disease, he points out the importance of opposing theories, and tends to accept Alexander's viewpoint on etiological overdetermination.

After a historical exposition of monistic and dualistic conceptions of pathology, the author reviews the monistic hypothesis of P