This book is a comprehensive review of the literature on this subject appearing in the Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus between 1936 and 1946. The study was financed by the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry and represents a continuation of the review by Nolan D. C. Lewis (1936) entitled "Research in Dementia Praecox (Past Attainments, Present Trends and Future Possibilities.)"
This is a monumental effort attested to by the 3,200 papers that were abstracted and summarized and the gathering of the material in readable form. The chapters include discussions on definition and description, statistics, etiology, diagnosis, physiologic and psychologic studies, somatic treatments and psychotherapy. Each chapter has a complete and valuable bibliography.
Noteworthy is Dr. Bellak's organized concept of the entire problem, which he calls a psychosomatic view. He views each case as located at some point between complete psychogenicity and complete organicity and feels that one must evaluate somatic and sociopsychologic