Personality and Mental Illness

It is not easy to give a fair and adequate survey of this book within the compass of a short review. It embodies an ambitious attempt to endow concepts of mental illness with accuracy and precision. It also illustrates the more independent attitude adopted by some of the younger members of the psycho-analytical school. The author takes as the two basic personality types the Schizoid and the Syntonic, and when one or other is involved in mental illness, he holds that the psychic mechanisms employed will differ. But for a proper diagnosis, he postulates that there are four general questions that will need to be considered: A, the genetic type as above; B, the personality sub-type of which he mentions eleven varieties; C, the degree of stability; D, the present state and how it developed. His first approach to the patient will not be, is he normal neurotic or psychotic, but is he a Schizoid who is normal, neurotic or psychotic, or is he a Syntone who is normal neurotic or