Inner and Outer Space. Introduction to a Theory of Social Psychiatry: By Richard Rabkin, M.D. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1970. 215 pp.

This is a difficult book to review. The author promises to introduce here a 'new medicine, a new disease, and a new patient', and attempts to outline a new theory of social psychiatry. If his promise is taken seriously, the book will be disappointing for it falls far short of fulfilling this goal.

At times important topics are treated as if the author were outlining a paper without the details necessary to confirm his propositions. He introduces many new terms and challenges the reader by stating that he sees the patient, the disease, and the medicine 'all to reside outside of the body in outer space …'. In fact, Dr. Rabkin is very space oriented, and he uses this term—as he does so many others—at times in a philosophical sense, as a psychic experience, or in other connections as a means to arrange data for his own theoretical 'dimensions'. Thus he arrives at the proposition of interfaces. 'An interface can be a third piece of cloth between two others. It suggests a new ingredient in the environment of the social sciences.' Employing this concept of interface, he then proposes six dynamics—among them the interface shock, interface penetration, resonance, and so forth. These descriptive statements reveal how the