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We look to a new book on the psychology of crime by an experienced psychoanalyst to help us with difficult problems of treatment and administration. In Dr. Abrahamsen's book we find: 'A criminal act is the sum of a person's criminalistic tendencies plus his total situation, divided by the amount of his resistance. This law can be put into a formula:
(p. 37). This sort of thing fills much of the book. The presentation of psychoanalytic theory is awkward; for example, 'In view of the frustrations a child may experience during the first years of his life, a great deal of resentment and hostility will arise in him. These will be maintained and heightened as he meets new frustrations and may increase when he enters the genital stage, which normally lasts from about the third to the sixth year' (p. 73). This confusion of phallic autoerotic organization with genitality is typical of the author's casual treatment of the relations between ego, instinct, and object so useful in formulating the structure of criminal behavior.
Most of the major areas of criminology are covered in a dozen loosely organized chapters. There are some interesting statistics in the book, but they are not critically evaluated. For the psychiatrist newly interested in this field the bibliography may serve as a guide to unfamiliar literature on correction. However, to write a book on criminal psychology which presents psychoanalytic formulations, sociological surveys, and recommendations for classification and disposition of all types of offenders, and to make it 'useful to people in all walks of life', is likely to present some difficult problems. Dr. Abrahamsen does not solve them.