Books Received
| Published date | 01 December 1971 |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486587100400415 |
| Date | 01 December 1971 |
| Subject Matter | Books Received |
AUST. &N.Z. JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY (Dec., 1971): 4, 4 261
magician, and some psychiatrists play
up to this. Instead of talking about
the dynamics of
war
and peace, which
is fine because it is an extrapolation
of dynamic theory, they make a
statement
that
the
war
in Asia is,
well, you know, absurd, idiotic,
that
it has no good
pur
p0s e,
that
Americans have no place over there.
They are drawing conclusions they
have no right to draw.
Just
because
we know something about internal
processes in interpersonal relation-
ships among individuals and small
groups does not mean we can extra-
polate this to nations. Nations
are
not
just
people. I am
not
against
anyone making statements about Viet-
nam or anything else, but it is very
important
that
when we make state-
ments we identify ourselves as private
citizens, not psychiatrists."
It may be
that
the
public is partly to
blame, but one cannot
shut
one's eyes
to the utterances of some very dis-
tinguished psychiatrists. For example, one
notes
that
in 1941
the
then
President of
the
American Psychiatric Association
"urged his colleagues to view
war
as a
public health problem with roots in
'psychological
and
psychopathological
factors'. More recently, psychiatrist
Jerome D. Frank, pointing to a number of
similarities between
the
behaviour of
nations moving toward or threatening
war
and the behaviour of mental patients, has
suggested
that
the insights of the clinic
and hospital must be utilized if mankind
is
not
to destroy itself" (p.147). Professor
Desmond Curran in 1952 titled his
presidential address to the Psychiatric
Section of
the
Royal Society of Medicine,
"Psychiatry Ltd.", and it might well seem
that
today the profession of psychiatry
should carefully ponder such a rubric; so
also might those qualified in and working
in closely related fields.
A
matter
of interest is
that
'from
the
questionnaires
the
author
found
that
the
vast
majority of
both
the
psychiatrists
and the psychoanalysts (between 80 and
90
per
cent.) considered
that
alcoholism,
crime, the divorce rate, drug addiction,
illegitimacy, mental illness and suicide
would either remain
at
the same
rate
or increase in frequency over
the
next
decade and
that
crime, divorce, drug
addiction and illegitimacy would be likely
to increase (p.140).
In
short
this is a book well
worth
read-
ing by all psychiatrists, by all concerned
with the behavioural sciences, including
"criminologists" and all who may hanker
after
a God-like mantle as might become
someone who could cure
the
present day
ills of the world.
ALLEN
A.
BARTHOLOMEW
Melbourne.
BOOKS
RECEIVED
Blom-Cooper, L. (ed.), The Hanging Ques-
tion: Essays on
the
Death Penalty.
Duckworth, London, 1969, 137 pp., $2.25.
Bopp, W. J.,
The
Pollee Rebellion: A
Quest for Blue Power. Charles Thomas,
Springfield, 1971, 217 pp., $10.75.
Emery, F. E., Freedom and Justice Within
Walls: The Bristol Prison Experiment.
Tavistock, London, 1970, 118 pp., $4.65.
Ferguson, R. J., The Scientific Informer,
Charles Thomas, Springfield, 1971, 227
pp., $9.50.
Hughes, H. M., Delinquents and Criminals:
Their
Social
World. Allyn &Bacon,
Boston, 1971, 210 pp., $2.00.
Jacobs, F. G., Criminal Responsibility.
Weidenfeld &Nudson, London, 1971,
188 pp., $8.95.
Leonard, V. A., Criminal Investigation and
Identification. Charles Thomas, Spring-
field, 1971, 144 pp., $7.25.
Sparks, R. F., Local Prisons: The Crisis
in
the
English Penal System. Heinemann,
London, 1971, 147 pp., $6.40 (approx.).
Any
books
for
review should be
sent to the Ed.itor,
Department
of
Criminology,
University
of Melbourne,
Parkville, Victoria, 3052.
The Editor and the
Advisory
Edi-
torial
Board do not accept respon-
sibility
for any
views
or criticisms
expressed
regarding
any
books re-
viewed
in this section.
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