way in which complex psychiatric groups are being split up. And finally I have taken occasion to introduce, in addition to the new facts, discussions at various points that seem to me calculated to help the student. For instance, I have taken up the matter of psychological specificity in my discussion of the mental symptoms of encephalitis lethargica. W. A. W. ST. ELIZABETHS HOSPITAL, January 1, 1923 PREFACE TO THE TENTH EDITION The tenth edition contains a considerable amount of new matter. All new matter, however, has been carefully selected with the constant desire of assisting the student to acquire a reasonably adequate grasp of modern psychiatry. For example, statistics of "insanity" are usually not of much use to the student of psychiatry, and until the last edition I had sedulously avoided them, but recently statistics have been gathered more carefully and with a better understanding of the material, and some of them are very illuminating. Some of these I have not hesitated to include. The concept of the organism as a whole, which I developed at some length in my "Foundations of Psychiatry," in this edition receives more definite recognition, as does also the allied concept of the importance of extraneural pathology in the understanding of mental disease. The student will also find, particularly in the discussions of dementia precox and epilepsy, a growing sense of the importance of recognizing archaic types of reaction not only in the content but in the process of thinking, and not only as relates to purely psychological material but to other functions as well, especially the motor functions as seen in catatonia and in epilepsy. And finally I have added, in Part III, the Kuhlmann tests for the first two years as supplying what I conceive to be a real need. These tests have seemed to justify themselves, about as well as any such methods of examination can, over a considerable period of use, and at the same time do not appear to be readily accessible in the literature. W. A. W. ST. ELIZABETHS HOSPITAL, WASHINGTON, D. C., Sept. 1, 1924 |