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The author prefaces his book with a denunciation of Freud's “vast super-structure” as “extremely fanciful.” He then proposes “to separate the chaff from the wheat, and to give as much of the school of psychoanalysis (limited by common consent to the school of Freud) as is of logical and practical value.” This “purification” is undoubtedly felt necessary in order to realize the rather ambitious proposal of the author to make available to physicians other than psychiatrists certain methods of treatment gleaned from over 200 cases in the author's experience. One gains the impression that there is very little wheat that remains in this process of refinement and that the conclusions reached are often unwarranted.
There are nevertheless a few commendable aspects, particularly the psychosomatic correlations and the discussion of tension symptoms due to disturbances in the autonomic nervous system.
The interpretation of the illustrataive case material is on the whole puerile. For example on page 113 we read:
“Mr. J. D., aged twenty-two years, came in complaining of having had pains in the right side of the abdomen for six years, which lasted from three days to a week and subsided only to occur after several days. In addition, he