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Dr. Jacobson has been involved, for many decades, in explorations of tension, the role of skeletal muscle in the tension syndrome, and therapeutic efforts to relieve anxiety and tension symptoms on a basis that he regards as scientific. He was a student of Dr. Walter Cannon and since that time has pursued his investigations which have never had wide acceptance.
The present volume is a restatement of ideas he expressed 30 years ago in a volume called Progressive Relaxation (1938). Since that volume he has incorporated some findings derived from studies on the limbic system, and some data from Gellhorn on cats to strengthen his theoretic position.
He is extremely critical of the generally presented psychiatric theory, and would prefer to define emotion only in physiologic terms. That there are gaps in our understanding in the chain of feeling and emotion to its ultimate expression in an end organ would