Psychiatry for the Paediatrician

Shirley, M.D., Associate Professor of Paediatrics and Psychiatry and Executive Director of the Child Psychiatry Unit, Stanford University School of Medicine. N.Y. Commonwealth Fund. Oxford University Press. 25s. This is an eminently competent and satisfactory book which should prove very useful to students, paediatricians and practitioners desirous of becoming familiar with the principles of child psychiatry. Approach to the subject is psycho-biological and the child is seen as a developing organism reacting to factors in its own make-up and in the family and social environment. The author pays due respect to Kanner whose influence is obvious in the attitudes adopted and the presentation of the subject matter. In a preliminary section on basic concepts in child guidance, analytic concepts are simply, though not necessarily inaccurately presented, but in actual discussion of the emotional life attention is directed to manifest behaviour rather than to psychopathology. Discussion, too, is at the level of every-day life and includes such terms as " self-