You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In bringing together these seven selected papers, The American Foundation for the Blind has provided both a fitting memorial for Louis Cholden and a fundamental text for anyone interested in the problems of the physically handicapped. Cholden's rare gifts as clinical investigator and teacher, and his phenomenal capacity to inspire his co-workers are revealed on almost every page. Whether he is addressing ophthalmologists in Psychiatric Aspects of Informing the Patient of His Blindness, or social workers in The Effect of Monetary Giving on Human Beings, or psychiatrists in Group Therapy With the Blind, Cholden presents psychoanalytic principles in concise, lucid terms and with an unerring grasp of his auditors' professional needs and unconscious resistances.
While any psychoanalyst would find this book engaging and instructive, I would recommend it particularly to those working with members of allied professions in social agencies, hospitals, schools, and clinics. Psychoanalysts as well as others in these settings not infrequently become pessimistic because of preoccupation with the magnitude of the obvious problems and the insufficiency of therapeutic resources which tends to obscure the less obvious positive potentials. A refreshing antidote to this tendency is provided by the last paper, Where Do We as Rehabilitation Workers Feel Ourselves Lacking That We Must Look for a Scapegoat. Cholden was no Pollyanna; he was rigorously honest in delineating the large gaps in our professional knowledge and insisting on the critical evaluation of 'traditional hand-me-downs, uncritically accepted… We have to know what is truth and what is excuse. This can only be learned from research.'