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Keiser tackles an area that is seldom dealt with in the psychological and psychiatric literature. His endeavor is to provide a complete picture of the traumatic neurosis with its various ramifications and manifestations that may serve as a kind of all-purpose manual for the many medical specialties, “for attorneys, insurance adjusters, employers, and all others intimately associated with the victim of a compensable accident.”
It seems that the patient runs a gamut through people who contribute to the development of the neurosis and duration of the disability. Factors of compensation and litigation exacerbate the acute phase of the traumatic disturbance and prolong it into a “chronic phase of indeterminate length.”
The author traces the ways by which man has dealt with his anger in reaction to injury by another. From immediate retribution, lex talionis, to a day in court, “Financial compensation had replaced revenge” or “the shedding of blood.” With compensation as a focal point, there developed a multitude of professional and legal attitudes toward the patient, his motivations, and his dynamics. There is a lack of consensus on and inadequate understanding of the problem.
Keiser's wish to serve a variety of professions that are very different in educational backgrounds and philosophies is most evidenced by his discussion of the structure and function of personality. Though he admits to an elementary presentation that is geared to the untrained reader, his explication of psychoanalytic concepts is more academically impressive than truly serviceable, as seems to be the intent of this manual. Insurance adjusters and employers, as well as many in the other medical specialties, do not have the frame of reference to make this meaningful to them. Similar difficulty may be expected in some parts of his chapter on psychiatric illnesses.
However, the promise of this volume as a manual becomes more fulfilled later on. The author shifts from a survey to a more specific and meaningfu