Social Class and Mental Illness: A Community Study. By August B. Hollingshead, Ph.D. and Frederick C. Redlich, M.D. New York:  John Wiley and Sons, 1958. Pp.  442+ix. $7.50.: Family and Class Dynamics in Mental Illness. By Jerome K. Myers, Ph.D. and Bertram H. Roberts, M.D. New York:  John Wiley and Sons, 1959. Pp  295+ix. $6.95.

These volumes present an investigation into the relationship between social class and mental illness which is outstanding in breadth of orientation and thoroughness of experimental control.

The book by Hollingshead and Redlich is particularly noteworthy for its delightful urbaneness of style, lending a ready communicability to what otherwise might be mere statistical detail. Their work is oriented toward the investigation of hypotheses which state that social class is related to mental illness in terms of: 1. prevalence of illness, 2. types of psychiatric diagnosis, and 3. type of psychiatric treatment.

The entire population of New Haven, Connecticut was used as a source for drawing a five percent stratified sample of both mental patients and controls. Hollingshead and Redlich demonstrate that: 1. mental illness is more prevalent in lower than in upper classes, 2. going downward in social class there is a decreasing incidence of neurosis and increase of psychosis, and 3. psychotherapy is received primarily in upper classes, whereas lower classes receive primarily custodial and organic therapy.

These findings, demonstrated with exhaustive statistical control, seem to this rviewer to stand second to the author's thoroughness of information hard come by and their understanding in depth of massive amounts of data. Consider the following statement of relationship between social class and type of neurotic symptom:

The class V (lowest) neurotic behaves badly, the class IV neurotic aches physically, the class III patient defends fearfully, and the class I-II patient is dissatisfied with himself. Thus we have a psycho-social pattern of community dislocation, a “body language” of pain and malfunction, social anxiety, and verbal symbolic dislocation, all called neurosis, (p. 240).

Or, consider the minute social description of New Haven psychiatrists, 95 percent of whom fall in class I. These psychiatrists are classified into two categories, the A-P group (analytic and psychological