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In this major thesis of 361 pages Dr. Lacan, of Paris, offers a lot of material of value to the psychoanalytically oriented psychiatrist.
Primarily the thesis centers about a psychoanalytic presentation of a case of paranoia: Aimée. This alone, because of the paucity of this type of presentation, entitles it to careful consideration.
Secondly the author presents an extremely detailed and highly penetrating digest of the development of the nosological discussions relative to the whole group of the paranoid and allied conditions with which French psychiatry has occupied itself exhaustively. Here the author shows a large and firm grasp of contemporaneous German psychiatry as well as of those of his own colleagues. Kraepelin's conceptions occupy a major place in the story, with much intertwining of the French preoccupations with the chronic hallucinatory psychoses of Gilbert Ballet and others.
Thirdly he would erect a nosological entity, a “Paranoia of auto-punition,” separable by subtle descriptive criteria from the closely related syndromes which have occupied a prominent rôle in French psychiatric thought as represented in the work of Serieux, Capgras and their followers and whose favorable prognostic possibilities are noted.
And finally our interest has been quickened by the author's utilization of the dynamic conceptions of Freud, taking in Jackson's idea of evolution and dissolution of the psychical functions as an earlier phase of the dynamic understanding of psychical activities, the latter which have been focal points of attention of such recent French psychiatrists as Ey, Nodet, Claude, Clerambault and others.
These features do not exhaust the possibilities of this masterly thesis, but are here pointed to as being of special value to the reviewer.
To one who would penetrate the maze of the complicated discussions concerning the psychotic mosaics which stem originally from Esquirol's ‘Monomania’ through the Falrets, to Magnan and his systematized delusional psychoses