The Disturbed Child. Recognition and Psychoeducational Therapy in the Classroom: By Pearl Berkowitz and Esther P. Rothman. New York: The New York University Press, 1960. 204 pp.

The school for some years has been regarded as a crucial setting

for the detection and amelioration of emotional and behavioral disorders in children. In recent years, with the introduction of specialized personnel into the school system, an attempt has been made to help emotionally disturbed children via the school counseling service, the school psychologist and social worker, or the school child guidance clinic. The mental health consultation and group dynamic programs for teachers have approached the problem by adding to the knowledge and understanding of the teachers themselves regarding the principles of mental health and the emotional development of children. The special education programs, which are an integral part of a child psychiatric setting, represent a third area of collaboration between educators and mental health specialists.

It is the latter type of experience that Pearl H. Berkowitz and Esther P. Rothman describe in this book. The authors are psychologists and educators with long experience in the children's wards of psychiatric hospitals and in the special schools of New York City. They have written a concise outline of the recognition and treatment of the emotionally unstable child with chapters on childhood schizophrenia, organic defects, neuroses, sexual deviations, and psychopathic personalities, each illustrated by brief clinical vignettes. Programs for aiding the maladjusted child in the general classroom are suggested and methods of detection are outlined for the more complex cases of deviation so that appropriate referrals for specialized help may be made. The techniques of the trained psychoeducational therapist are discussed together with a transcript from an actual class session in a psychiatric hospital.

In alerting the public school teacher to a heightened awareness of emotional disturbance among his pupils, the authors are in accord with the aims of many mental health specialists over the past twenty or thirty years. There is