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The limitation of general classifications in psychiatry is well shown by the fact that it would be rather difficult to delimit clearly the scope of the disorders included in this book. Rosenfeld is concerned less with describing a special syndromatic entity or a reaction type than with the attempt to present a series of clinical facts that have a great deal in common and can be grouped together conveniently as "disorders of consciousness." He believes that disorders of consciousness are always accompanied by "changes in the bodily-nervous sphere." From the point of view of systematic psychopathology his attempt is rather problematic. Disorders of consciousness occur in almost any psychopathologic reaction type, and it is misleading to infer from their existence a physical, or as one says nowadays, "biologic," foundation. The author assumes, for example, that hysteria has a biologic foundation. Owing to the ubiquity of prolonged or episodic disorders of