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The thirty-three papers in this volume represent twenty-five years of devoted work with psychotic children at The Langley Porter Children's Service. A big heavy book, it is nevertheless a tightly condensed sample of the authors' experiences and findings. Such work is so lengthy, demanding, and stressful that it would be impossible and inappropriate to present it in shortened capsules for hurried consumption. The interested reader, however, will find it well worth his time to study the entire book in detail.
Szurek and Berlin have inspired and directed a large staff of collaborators in a particular approach to the study and treatment of psychotic children. Their human values and scientific viewpoint permeate and unify the book. Each contribution is marked by painstaking, enlightened devotion to the work, by utmost honesty to self and patients, by sensitivity to the needs and feelings of the disturbed families as well as of co-workers, by respect for each patient, however regressed and thwarting his behavior, and by a fine appreciation of what constitutes a healthy relationship. These attributes, so crucial in work with emotionally disturbed persons, are rarely maintained in long-term close contact with psychotic children. Such youngsters' responses are so primitive, distorted, and unamenable to change that they tempt us, as they tempt their parents, to resort to rationalized short cuts, aberrations, and lapses in professional attitudes and techniques. Several clinical papers portray beautifully how acutely the most withdrawn children respond to the unspoken feelings and tensions in their human surroundings. It is a further mark of the professional maturity of these therapists that they are able to extend their empathy to the patients' parents and help them participate in the active care of their sick children.
Some aspects of this group's approach may be debatable. Objection may be raised to the lack of a metapsychological viewpoint