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It is with somewhat mixed feelings that the reviewer undertakes an estimation of this book of Bleuler, especially as he himself is the author of a textbook and comes naturally to review another textbook with fairly definite feelings of how such a work ought to be constructed.
In attempting to evaluate all of his mixed feelings the reviewer comes finally to a state of mind regarding Bleuler's textbook of psychiatry which can best be expressed by the word disappointment, though this by no means expresses an evaluation of the work. The book, as a whole is perhaps the best textbook of psychiatry we have in English. It must be remembered, however, that it is the only textbook of psychiatry published in this country, which makes any claim to covering the ground, for nearly twenty years, so that it really has no competitors. Nevertheless, to say that it was other than a splendid effort would be to understate it. The disappointment which the reviewer feels does not result from any quality that the book has per se, but is a feeling which is the result of his normal expectations from the author. Bleuler is easily one of the foremost clinical psychiatrists of the world and as good a book as his textbook is the reviewer is forced to an admission that it falls considerably below his estimate of what Bleuler could produce.
The main quarrel which the reviewer has with this textbook is that it is not in fact what Dr. Kirby says it is in the introduction. Dr. Kirby's very complimentary and appreciative introduction says: “The book marks a notable advance in psychiatry in that it emphasizes sharply the contrast between the older descriptive psychiatry of Kraepelin and the newer interpretative psychiatry of the present time which utilizes the psychoanalytic principles and general biological viewpoints developed by Freud and his pupils in Europe and by Meyer, Hoch, White and others in this country.” While this statement of Dr. Kirby's is not without foundation, the reviewer does not beli