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The Cummings have shown in their first book, Closed Ranks, how a psychiatrist and a sociologist can collaborate and produce an exciting and thought-provoking work. Ego and Milieu is a fine second to their first work. This book is, as A. H. Stanton says in the foreword, "a straightforward attack upon perhaps the critically central problem of contemporary psychiatry. The analysis of the relation between the hospital and treatment environment and the character of psychiatric illness." The authors attempt in this work to develop theory and practice of milieu therapy which will encompass "a scientific manipulation of the environment aimed at producing changes in the personality of the patient."
The book is divided into three parts: (1) The Ego; (2) The Structure of the Milieu; (3) Ego in Milieu. In the first part the authors try to formulate a theoretical framework for tying together the patient and his environment. They