Recent Research on Creative Approaches to Environmental Stress: Edited by Ralph H. Ojemann. Iowa City: State University of Iowa, Department of Publications, 1964. 186 pp.

'I'm interested. I am concerned. I really wish we knew more about it', says one of the participants part way through the Proceedings of the Fourth Institute on Preventive Psychiatry, sponsored by the State University of Iowa in 1963. Her comment shows the concern and dedication of the participants, but it also raises questions.

Some two hundred fifty persons—among them psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, clergymen, teachers, students, businessmen, personnel directors, 4-H leaders, lawyers, sociolgoists, representatives of government agencies, and other interested citizens—banded together for an institute, the purpose of which was 'to look at the problem of prevention … by considering recent investigations in creative approaches to environmental stress'. They discussed seven papers on the stresses arising from biological factors, from the period of adolescence, and from the effects of authoritarian controls, industrial automation, and family conflicts. The papers and the discussions are reported verbatim.

This is not the first time (nor will it be the last) that mindlessly