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This is the seventh volume of an annual series whose aim is “the evaluation and systematic understanding of areas of general and academic psychology that form both the background and content of most of the work in clinical psychology.” Like its predecessors, it is exceedingly difficult to review coherently, not only because the quality of the different contributions varies over a wide range, but also because each chapter has its own unique design and intention, and the book is not an annual review, nor a survey of the recent status of the field, nor an anthology held together by a specific theme or purpose.
The first part of the book consists of four chapters which examine “problems and developments in the practice of clinical psychology” and provide some normative statistics on “manpower and training.” These chapters also explore some aspects of the psychologist's social role and summarize research results which monotonously confirm that the most often used psychological tests yield very low reliability and validity figures—a fact which, the authors assert, nevertheless gives them a view of the future of diagnostic testing that is “not so pessimistic as that of Paul Meehl.”
Part II, entitled “Research Problems and Progress in Clinical Psychology,” is the bulkiest. It includes two articles on the clinical psychologist as consultant (one of these has a twelve-page text and lists 317 references), and one article which deals with the development of pastoral psychology. This section contains a review of the literature on the sociocultural aspects of psychotherapy and other treatment which, in addition to summarizing research on social factors in mental illness and its treatment, reports on “studies which deal with possible relationships between psychotherapeutic techniques and the idiosyncrasies of their originators.” (“Freud … was also very status conscious … his carriage was drawn by two horses although one would have sufficed”!) It also contains one article on mental h