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Many practicing psychoanalysts engage part time in community psychiatric services but Caplan is one of few psychoanalysts who has devoted his career to the mental health of the community. His book integrates his rich experience, with the published products of psychoanalytic, sociologic, and other research for the development of a systematic theory and practice of preventive psychiatry. The first of a trilogy, it is a clearly written, modest, pioneer effort, and it merits careful study by all professionals in the field.
In whatever capacity the psychoanalyst serves in a community program, he will find much that is instructive and challenging; there is also much that is admittedly vague and tentative in such areas, not encompassed in psychoanalytic training, as interdisciplinary collaboration, programming, and techniques for disarming community resistances. The most substantial contributions are contained in the two chapters devoted to mental health consultation.
Misgivings arise not from any fundamental disagreement with what is stated but from what this book fails to include. Caplan ignores some important issues which are vital to the progress of mental health in the community, and its optimal utilization of psychoanalysis. The current momentum to introducing measures for the promotion of mental health in public communities was stimulated most dramatically by President Kennedy's historic legislation in 1963. The increase of federal and state subsidies for new community programs poses serious problems that psychoanalysts cannot afford to ignore.
Under the great pressure of community needs for building new facilities, initiating and organizing programs, and recruiting additional workers there is grave danger that high professional standards will be sacrificed. Everyone seems to be aware of the paucity of qualified professional personnel engaged in community work, of the very limited number of students preparing for careers in it, and of the pervasive practice of u