This short volume contains a fictionalized account of the treatment of a psychotic child by a staff psychologist at a state institution for mentally defective children. In this highly melodramatic tale all stops are out. The therapist-hero is confronted by antagonistic, cruel hospital personnel and a bungling, bureaucratic professional staff who, presumably in a fit of jealous pique, force the hero out of the hospital and thus interrupt the treatment which had till then

been going swimmingly. Although the author is said to be a trained psychologist, he presents a totally unreal, highly sentimentalized picture of the child-patient who seems less like a psychotic child than a poetic, oversensitive girl who has escaped into a fantasy world as a result of cruel treatment by her elders. The therapeutic philosophy is a garbled mixture of catharsis and Sechehaye's Symbolic Realization.

This is a poorly written book that will be of no interest to the professional reader.