This volume represents an attempted integrated report of the scientific sessions of the Academy of Psychoanalysis in 1964. There are three themes: creativity, communication, and community psychiatry. As in all symposiums, the papers were uneven in quality. Some texts were obfuscating, others were redundant, and a few even lacked a theme.
It is indeed tragic that the excellent quality of the past seven volumes is not generally reflected in this edition. The papers dealing with creativity by Harris, Parloff, Spiegel, and Shands are superb, and in the tradition of the past editions. James Miller and Harley Shands brilliantly illuminate and analyze the dynamics of communication by painting a collage of computers, cognitive theory, and psychopathology.
The papers dealing with community psychiatry seem tangential to the crucial issues of this text.One felt like he was wading up a psychiatric stream—being buffeted about by huge waves of obscurities. Even though there are