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This volume is designed to fulfill the needs of teachers and other workers in the field of adolescence. The author states her aims in the introduction: (1) To include only objectively proven facts; (2) to present a relatively comprehensive picture of the adolescent years; (3) and to make a book as useful as possible. The material is concerned with normal adolescence, abnormal adolescence, and an educational program.
Separate chapters are devoted to the subjects of social and ethical development in addition to the more familiar material dealing with physical, emotional, and intellectual development. Dr. Cole's description of the normal adolescent and his problems is highly to be commended. It is inclusive and life-like and the advice offered is of a concrete and practical nature. The illustrative cases are well-chosen with an effort to accentuate the normal and usual problems rather than the rarer and more sensational. Although the author states that the volume was prepared rather for use by teachers than by parents, the chapters not strictly devoted to educational reform might very well prove useful to this other group so intimately concerned with adolescence.
Dr. Cole divided abnormal reaction types into delinquents, emotional deviates, intellectual deviates, and vocational misfits. The emotional deviates she further subdivides into neurasthenic, hysteric, fanatic, inadequate, and pathological personalities. The reviewer does not feel that this concept of psychopathology is either entirely true nor desirable. While it is borne in mind that psychological and psychiatric nosology is largely a matter of definition, it would seem advisable to employ a classification more in line with the generally accepted Kraepelinian diagnostic grouping.
The author outlines an educational program as a mental hygiene method applicable in the adolescent and preadolescent period. This involves individualization of the high-school program to fit the needs of the less intelligent, intelligen