This book presents a clear picture of the way in which a psychoanalytically oriented child-guidance clinic operates, and makes clear the understanding and rationale by which the staff tries to understand the child and formulate a plan of treatment. The author was originally a practicing pediatrician who, after training in child psychiatry and child analysis, has been Director of the Amherst H. Wilder Child Guidance Clinic, in St. Paul, Minn., for the past twenty-five years.
It contains excellent sections on various childhood neuroses, personality or character problems, acting out or antisocial behavior, and the psychotic and brain-damaged child. In the section on neuroses there is a chapter on the child with a depression. This relatively common, but often unrecognized, problem deserves more attention. It is unfortunate that the author has not included more discussion of the physiological disturbances which often accompany this condition.
There is an excellent statement on the