Psychogenic Psychoses. A Description and Follow-Up of Psychoses Following Psychological Stress: By Poul M. Faergeman, M.D. Washington, D. C.: Butterworth, Inc., 1963. 268 pp.

The concept of psychogenic psychoses, alien to American psychiatric thinking, has been intensively studied and debated by European psychiatrists for more than fifty years. Psychogenic psychoses include what we should label severe reactive depressions, reactive disorders of consciousness (such as stupors, delirium states, and states of depersonalization), hysteria, and, in many instances, traumatic neurosis. The concept is not equivalent to 'functional psychoses'. Schizophrenia and manic-depressive psychosis are not included among psychogenic psychoses and have to be differentiated.

Faergeman has clarified the concept, which he believes valid, by bringing to the problem his rich clinical experience, his familiarity with the Anglo-American and European literature, and, above all, his psychoanalytic training and experience. Although interested in refining nosology, he eschews phenomenologic hair-splitting and preoccupation with questions of mind versus body. Psychoanalytic theory, particularly the concept of predisposition to neurosis or psychosis because of specific unconscious conflicts, is shown to be