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An excellent book. It seems too bad to have to be critical about it in places, but it must needs be so. Dr. Richards, with her long and
rich experience, has written instructively, wisely, and entertainingly about her work, which might well be read by parents and teachers generally. She has shown how behavior disorders and delinquencies of various sorts are traceable to frustrations in child's lives and how intelligent appreciation of the nature of these, followed by an adequate program would clear up symptoms that on their face seem to indicate profound illness and to be inexplicable. But as the reviewer has often noted there are two kinds of psychotherapy, one which undertakes to deal with the environment by removing the patient from the noxious stimuli which he cannot deal with adequately and by exposing him to those stimuli which are beneficient in their results, and the other method which, by the way, is psychoanalytic, and that is the method that deals with the structure and function of the psyche from within. The former method is the one apparently used exclusively by the author. The latter receives practically no consideration whatever, and in places where the former method breaks down the latter is not resorted to. It can be easily understood why in a busy out-patient clinic analysis, either in pure culture or in some variant form might be too elaborate and time consuming to be practically applicable, but why she should ignore its possibilities is another question. Is this perhaps a deep seated antagonism to the psychoanalytic school? If so it is unfortunate, for the psychoanalysts have much to tell us. Even if she may happen to disagree with them here and there it is too bad that anyone should close his eyes and ears to everything they say and do. The Doctor does not think much of such terms as “psychopathic personality” (p. 177), but “constitutional handicaps and instabilities” (p. 175), seems to pass muster. Of course we must have words. I would wish th