Kretschmer's studies and ideas are always stimulating and worth a serious consideration. He offers, in this small book a brief exposition of his lifelong experience in psychotherapy. His concept of constitution

and his scheme of integration wherein mental and somatic factors are brought into comprehensive relationship are thought provoking and indicate further research in this field.

The presentation is highly individualistic and largely independent of other schools of thought. The author presents cases in terms of his own psychotherapeutic procedures, and his bibliographic references are to publications in the German language with one exception. However, he is consistently following his original “constitutional” psychiatry, and this has many possibilities for the illumination of the endogenic psychoses. Kretschmer's psychopathological concepts demand the serious attention of all psychiatrists interested in the fundamental causes of mental disorder.