The author in his sub-title announces this volume to be a “layman's guide to psychiatry”. It may be, providing the layman is well read in the field, of above-average intelligence and has the patience to plow through the novelistic case histories. From a psychiatric point of view, the spottiness of the book is discouraging, to say nothing of its dogmatic and frequently erroneous statements. Remarks such as, “when the angels have finished putting the child together, he may have more gut than brain, or more brain than muscle”, seem to be a unique contribution to science. This author has made an attempt to simplify psychiatric knowledge by presenting isolated bits of information tied up with case histories written in a breezy and novel-like fashion. His characters hardly seem true to life and such snappy phrases as, “the phantom in the bedroom”, or “the