The carefully selected papers (previously published) that comprise this book gain from chronological arrangement. Surprisingly, the editors do achieve their goal despite minimal editorial comment. The evolution of knowledge about anorexia nervosa and its determinants shows us how thought about psychosomatic medicine has developed. Concepts about illness have become more specific. The mind-body dichotomy is revealed as clearly irrational. The crucial questions of choice of organ for expression of conflict and the mechanisms of psychosomatic illness are in the foregound of discussion. Others papers discuss what is specific in a psychiatric syndrome, and show how symbolization and unconscious mentation play a part in somatic symptoms.

The editors, aware of the lack of psychoanalytic data and of the limitations of studies of case histories, acknowledge that 'we are