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This is the third edition of Kurt Schneider's familiar book on psychopathic personalities, the first edition of which appeared more than ten years ago. In its first edition the book was a welcome survey of a chapter that had always been a stepchild of clinical psychiatry. The present edition contains a number of additions and changes, but the main substance of the book is the same and so needs only brief comment.
The fact that the author has brought the book up to date (from his point of view) reveals certain of its defects more clearly than was apparent in earlier editions. On its first appearance, the book was considered a conservative presentation of the subject. In the intervening decade so much progress has been made in dynamic psychology, and psychopathology that the present up-to-date edition strikes one as not merely conservative but definitely backward. It is no longer possible