ABSTRACT
This chapter presents three reviews of books on autism: Child Psychiatry, by Leo Kanner; Childhood Schizophrenia, by William Goldfarb; and Infantile Autism, by Bernard Rimland. An attempt is made to embrace the whole of child psychiatry, and the result is a certain tedium which is perhaps inevitable in so ambitious a work. In place of an understanding of the psychology of the unconscious, there is to be found throughout the book the usual over-stressing of what might be called “the continuing bad external factor”, such as characterizes the publications of all child guidance clinics of American pattern. Childhood Schizophrenia is a term that is gradually evolving its own usefulness. The clinical states included under this term are not new, nor are they on the increase, but a recognition of these states is reaching a widening circle of workers in the field of child health.
