This is a short book for medical students designed to give in 169 pages of text a "bird's eye view" of psychiatry. In the four sentence preface, it is said that this book has been made "simple because the elements of psychiatry are simple and easy to understand." The book is essentially a presentation of the author's philosophy toward the theory and practice of psychiatry at the core of which is a view that gives primary importance to genetic factors. The immediate and past environment serve to influence an already "good" or "defective" personality. This genetic orientation does not seem to be one which considers the organism as an open system with interrelated levels of behavior (atomic to social) capable of permanent or transient change, but rather that the individual behavioral endowment, though capable of responding to external stimuli, will remain "good" or "defective" with individual modification