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Here at last is a text of mental hygiene written by a sociologist and a psychologist. Both of them have had wide experience in the mental hygiene field and are free from the more narrow psychiatric point of view which makes so many of our excellent treatises on the subject impossible of use in the average class of college or university students. It would seem that our knowledge of human nature and of human institutions has reached the point where it should be passed on to those capable of making use of it—to men and women in the ordinary walks of life, with small knowledge of, or patience with, the more technical aspects of the subject, but vitally concerned with its practical applications. To produce a book that will be of value in the classroom and at the same time of interest to the intelligent man in the street is no mean accomplishment, but our authors seem to have attained it.
The approach to the more specific applications of mental hygiene in various fields is through an introductory chapter which sketches rather briefly the origin and development of the mental hygiene movement, followed by chapters on the psychiatric and psychological background and the problem of mental disease. We do not find here the usual discussion of mental mechanisms, of character foundation and habit building, but a brief outline of the contributions of psychiatry and psychology to the understanding of human conduct. Evidently the authors are depending upon the assignment of collateral reading to supplement their treatment of this phase of the subject, which is usually a semester's work in itself. A subsequent chapter—though not immediately following—on mental hygiene and childhood treats the matter of habit foundation and the building of personality trends a little more fully. The rest of the book is devoted to discussion and exposition of the principles of mental hygiene as applied in various situations, personal and social. There is a discussion of delinquency as a mental health pr