Here is a badly needed book on psychoanalytic approaches to psychosis. The author is R. D. Hinshelwood, a British psychoanalyst who has worked in mental hospitals for many years and has broad experience with psychotic patients. He is also an excellent writer and an outstanding scholar whose publications include a dictionary of Kleinian thought.1

The key to excellent scholarship is clear thinking, thoroughness, and accessibility of writing style. This book, a series of related essays, has all these features. The first essay is “Helping to Help: The Impact of Madness on Those Who Care”; the second is “What's It Like? Psychoanalytic Theories of Schizophrenia”; and the third is