In recent years provision of care for psychiatrically disturbed adolescents has received increasing attention. The present situation was summarized in a leading article in the British Medical Journal (1971) which emphasized one aspect of this provision—the need for adolescent in-patient facilities based within the community. This paper describes the ideas and practices of an adolescent unit which was opened at Hill End Hospital, St. Albans, in September 1969 to take younger adolescents (up to 16) of both sexes, from the area of the North-West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board. This area covers 13,000 square miles and has a population of 4½ million, which the Unit aims to serve with 11 available beds. Who should be admitted to these places is clearly a critical question.

Therapeutic experience has suggested that there may be an association between parental loss and delinquency. Losses experienced by boys in care and their families were compared with losses experienced by control boys and their families. Boys in care had experienced significantly more losses through the death, divorce or separation of their parents than had control boys. The mothers of boys in care had also experienced significantly more losses when they were minors than any other group, including their sons. Maternal losses are significantly associated with boys being taken into care following legal proceedings.

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This book contains 41 readings (research reports previously published elsewhere) to complement these authors' previous survey of the field : The Scientific Credibility of Freud's Theories and Therapy. The point of such a complementary collection of readings should be to enable the reader, by allowing him to sample the best of the research, to evaluate the assertion that certain a,,spects of Freudian theory were T. PITT-AIKEN5,Consultant Psychiatrist.