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One of the most difficult problems in the field of mental disease is the following of patients accurately over long periods of time. Surgical and medical patients, of course, can be studied much more meticulously since they usually stay pretty well under the care of a single physician, who can then accurately estimate the results of treatments applied. Psychiatric cases on the other hand tend to drift from one doctor to another, and failures in treatment are very difficult to estimate and almost impossible to assess.
In addition to the difficulty as outlined above, there is further the entire problem of, when is treatment a failure? The answer to this question, of course, hinges upon the expectancy of the physician and patient in the treatment. Treatment may be required to produce amelioration of the symptoms or certain complaints may be accepted in exchange for adequate social function. These various problems are discussed in some fifteen papers presented in this edited volume and make most interesting reading for any practicing psychiatrist. Emphasis is primarily directed at specific types of treatment and various experts have discussed the problem of failure of their method in certain cases. An entirely unexpected by-product of the essays is the resultant discussion of the original method of treatment which, in some instances, develops a very clear presentation of original treatment techniques. As a matter of fact, some of the authors seem more concerned with verification of the method than with the problem of failure.
The discussions on hypnosis, physical therapies and psychobiology are particularly good. Occasionally, however, the experts hedge, attempting to claim value for their particular method of treatment even in the face of failure. The cases presented are also not finally delineated and one would wish for more exemplary case material rather than theoretical discussion.
The major fault of the volume seems to lie in its inability to admit the lack of knowled