Agoraphobia in the Light of Ego Psychology. By Edoardo Weiss. New York:  Grune & Stratton, 1964.  132 pp.: The Modes and Morals of Psychotherapy. By Perry London. New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964.  278 pp. Games People Play. By Eric Berne. New York:  Grove Press, 1964.  192 pp.

It is one of the peculiarities of psychiatry today that books on essentially the same subject can be published in the same year and yet be astonishingly different in their premises and conclusions. The field is in a state of flux and there are extreme divergences in point of view. The trend, if there is one, would seem to be moving outward from an older point of view focussing upon the interior of patients toward a new focus upon relationships. In this time of transition, there are ghosts of Christmas past, of Christmas present, and of Christmas yet to come.

As an example of a ghost of Christmas past we have Agoraphobia in the Light of Ego Psychology by Edoardo Weiss. This work offers, according to Dr. Weiss, a single unified study of a series of analyzed cases of agoraphobia. It includes a discussion of the psychodynamics of the phobia, a comparison of pseudo and true Agoraphobia, some therapeutic aspects, and the problem in terms of the theory of instincts and of the ego. This work is an extreme example of the timelessness of most psychoanalytic writing. One could not tell from the contents whether the book was written thirty years ago or yesterday, although the term “ego” appears with slightly more frequency than it might have years ago. The stream of history flows on bringing revolutionary