Community Psychiatry. Edited by Leigh M. Roberts, Seymour L. Halleck and Martin B. Loeb. Madison, Wisconsin:  University of Wisconsin Press, 1966.  252 pp.

Community psychiatry surely has a band, but there is no consensus on the number or content of the wagons behind it. This book, an account of the proceedings of an interdisciplinary symposium held at the University of Wisconsin, begins with the recognition mat “community psychiatry is like a swirling modern convention blaring with noise and spirit that is being beamed to large numbers of friends and neutrals and the opposition party.” Nevertheless, the field of community psychiatry is hailed (or hoped for) as “the third psychiatric revolution.” Pinel and Tuke were the heroes of the first revolution, Freud the second, and significantly, no hero exists for the third. The community itself may have to be recognized for any community-oriented approach that comes about.

The participants in this symposium share in the conviction that the insights and knowledge about human behavior, gained from the study and treatment of mental disorders, should somehow be made more broadly available in society. America is known for its mass production—like cars for everyone, so too for psychiatric care. And it is increasingly accepted, as this book recognizes, that all problems of human behavior need to be looked at from three frames of reference: the organic or physiological, the psychological, and the individual's relationship to the social environment.

Every society has its stresses, and creates problems which cannot be