The Nature and Treatment of Mental Disorders
- Author:
Dom Thomas Verner Moore, O.S.B., Ph.D., M.D.
Heinemann, London, 1944. 21s. net.
Those who have met Dom Thomas Moore at his psychiatric clinic in Washington, or on his visits to this country, are aware that he brings an unusual equipment to his work. He is a Priest as well as a Psychiatrist, and has a wide personal culture and a deep love of his fellow human beings. His attitude is therefore less negative and more constructive than that of certain writers.
For him, the Universe is governed by a definite code of moral laws to which he believes his patients should be brought to conform, and incidentally will be much happier if they do conform. This distinctive approach gives a fresh aspect to the clinical studies which occupy much of his book, although the ground covered will be familiar to students of psychiatric literature. He is neither narrow nor prudish, and his patients can look for complete understanding of human frailty.
The author writes well and clearly and shows a balanced and practical outlook in his handling of cases. Rarely have the composite methods of a modern psychiatric team been so well demonstrated. A chapter on ” Bibliotherapy ” introduces a very suggestive use of children’s interest in imaginative literature and biography to help them in the understanding of their own problems.
It has often surprised the reviewer that the technique of discussing children’s reading with them, which is such a valuable part of the child’s upbringing in a cultivated home, is so little used in Child Guidance work in this country.
The more academic chapters include a valuable survey of the ” origin and course of some phobias ” and a useful discussion of the concepts of psychopathology held by the classical schools of Freud, Jung and Alexander. The author’s own concept of mental disorder shows a leaning to psychological explanations, but the present time of flux is not propitious for dogmatism. “A mental disorder,” he states, ” is not so much a disturbance of inter-cellular connection as it is an over-accentuation of emotional experience or the upsetting of one’s mental adjustment to life by the destruction of all possibility of attaining objects of desire upon which one’s heart has been set.” He follows Adolf Meyer in attaching much importance to the original mental temperament of the patient, but his classification of mental disturbances is empirical, and hardly in accordance with modern teaching on this side of the Atlantic.
The account of recent work on the physiology of the emotions will form a useful introduction to the subject which is becoming of increasing importance in the psychiatric field. ” It seems natural to- conclude he says “that we must admit a double origin of emotional conditions: (a) cognitive experiences by interpretation of situations which are matters of great moment for the welfare of the individual, (b) physiological stimulation of cerebral centres, which give rise to a genuine emotional experience that has no primary and justifiable relation to anything perceived.”
It is very satisfactory that Dom Thomas Moore’s work is now made accessible to British readers. L.F.
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