The Schizophrenic Reactions: A Critique of the Concept, Hospital Treatment, and Current Research (Proceedings of the Menninger Foundation Conference on the Schizophrenic Syndrome): Edited by Robert Cancro, M.D. New York: Brunner/Mazel Publishers, 1970. 293 pp.

This volume is arranged, as was the Menninger Foundation Conference in Topeka out of which it grew, into three sections corresponding to the three topics listed in the subtitle. At that Conference a total of nineteen participants (including several psychoanalysts) presented formal papers and participated in a following panel discussion in their respective sections. This book is a record of the proceedings.

Authors in the section on the concept of schizophrenia in addition to the editor, Robert Cancro, are Paul W. Pruyser, Mark D. Altschule, Silvano Arieti, Leopold Bellak, Roy R. Grinker, Sr., Karl Menninger, and David Shakow. Their points of view for the most part are well known from previously published works, and in this volume are succinctly summarized by David Shakow in his introductory remarks to the panel discussion. There are no surprises in the form of substantially altered opinions on the part of the authors as a consequence of the give-and-take in the discussion period. There is also no agreement on the concept of schizophrenia, nor on the problems of classification and diagnosis. As a matter of fact, the participants were chosen because of their known differences in opinion. Most, but not all, expressed the conviction that there is indeed such a thing as schizophrenia. But the individual patient is often hard to categorize. Like the elusive Yeti who allegedly exists on the peaks of the Himalayas and who leaves only a hair here and footprint there, the schizophrenic sometimes defies convincing characterization. It is noted in another section of the book that the frequency of diagnosis of schizophrenia has decreased and that of manic depressive psychosis has increased since the advent of lithium carbonate as a treatment for mania.

In the second section on the indications for and value of hospital treatment, prominent consideration is given to social and economic as well as clinical factors both in the matter of admission and of discharge. Merely