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The author has done the psychiatric and psychoanalytic professions a great service in abstracting the main theoretical discussions containing psychoanalytic concepts of depression. He includes those writers who have contributed most to the theory on depression. They are Abraham, Freud, Rado, Gero, Melanie Klein, Bibring, Edith Jackson, and Mabel Blake Cohen. The abstracts of these writers are presented in understandable form as clear of technical language as is possible. Despite this attempt, psychoanalese often obscures what may possibly be cogent concepts, although this cannot be determined. Naturally the book contains a large bibliography of 176 items and an adequate index.
The reader can hardly wait to reach the summing up or conclusions of the author after having spent so much time in his abstractions. The first three paragraphs are quoted:
"It would have been pleasing to be able to report that this body of literature represented, in essence, a progress