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Of this book the first and most important part is a report on research on suicide and its prevention. The second is an account of attempted suicide by a twenty-three-year-old man, its data stripped, as far as possible, of material that might direct the clinical and theoretical bias of the reader; this is followed by discussions of the pathology of suicide and its management by two analysts and followers of Jung, Adler, Sullivan, Horney, and the schools of personal construct and nondirective management. The third part of the book is an extensive bibliography on suicide, from 1897 to 1957, with no reference to Freud, not even to Mourning and Melancholia.
Out of the great mass of statistics gathered by the Suicide Prevention Center in Los Angeles, certain generalizations are interesting and of practical use. This reviewer, however, does not share the authors' enthusiastic belief that a significant contribution has been made to the prevention of suicide, its pathology, or its management. We must assume that their experience in both short- and long-term treatment of a variety of patients is limited. They are limited, too, by the fact that they have not had to assume medical responsibility for whatever patients they have treated. It is noted that 'psychotherapists' call the Suicide Center for advice and are told, among other details, about facilities for hospitalization and procedures such as commitment. It is rare today, especially in our larger cities, to find a physician who is not familiar with this information. This report seems to represent the kind of fact-finding (apart from compilation of numbers) that could be obtained by having a half-dozen