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This work, by the late Dr. Clark, which appeared almost simultaneously with his decease, if he had written nothing else, would establish him forever among the important contributors to the field of American psychiatry. It is a splendid piece of work which sets forth very clearly the culminating tendencies in his own life of work which he had been consistently following for the past forty years or so. Beginning as he did with his experience with epilepsy at Craig Colony, New York, his original leanings were toward the so-called organic disorders of the higher brain centers associated with marked psychological and behavior disturbances. Following his work at Craig Colony he went more specifically into the field of the amentias, and in his more recent publications he has seemed to show a special interest in the more severe organic conditions, the hemiplegias, paraplegias, etc., associated with mental defect. From the very first interested in the psychoanalytic movement, he has felt that here there was perhaps for the first time a satisfying attack upon the problems of growth, development, and organization of the psychic apparatus, and that whether or not the nervous system, more particularly the brain, and more particularly still the cortex, were or were not injured, whether it retained its capacity to effectually transmit psychological motivations, the analysis and understanding of the patient at the psychological level was a legitimate enterprise in itself, and that various defects at this level might or might not be explainable by certain organic conditions, but in any case they were capable of description and understanding evaluation in their own right.
Dr. Clark has set forth the results of his work based upon what the reviewer conceives to have been his fundamental convictions as above stated, and the result is one of the most significant contributions that have yet been made in the field of mental deficiency. Dr. Clark's persistent optimism and never tiring indus