Review of Backward and feeble-minded children: A clinical study in the psychology of defectives with a syllabus for the clinical examination and testing of children and A syllabus for the clinical examination of children.

Abstract

The book is, as its subtitle states, "Clinical Studies in the Psychology of Defectives." It is divided into seven chapters of which one is devoted to the general Introduction, one to Classification and Terminology and two to Clinical Studies of Border Cases. These studies are selected from one hundred forty cases examined by Dr. Huey according to the Binet-Simon tests out of the one hundred forty-seven received at the Lincoln (Illinois) State Home from November 17, 1909, to November 16, 1910. Thirty-seven clinical cases are given with thirty-two portraits. The cases are written up very clearly. The mental age, retardation, school performances, industrial accomplishments ana disposition give the reader a good mental picture of each caseeven without the portraits. The book will be especially interesting to teachers and from it the medical profession and laity will get a better idea of the high-grade feeble-minded than is usually supplied by the textbooks. One only regrets that Dr. Huey could not have spent a longer time in his studies and included a wider range of cases in the large population of the Lincoln Home, though, if only one group were to be selected for intensive study and only a few months could be devoted to them, no group is more interesting than the morons. The work done with them so far by all investigators of mental defect is but the preparation for a hoped-for better understanding of that still smaller group of young people, of about normal intellectual capacity and without psychosis, that seem to make failures in life. This book will give the laity a better conception of the problem. The title, it seems to the writer, is rather unfortunate in that it suggests a general treatise on the subject of backward and feebleminded children instead of a small subgroup , although the subtitle correctly defines its scope. The "Clinical Study" was the first fruit in book form of the realization of the long-desired plan of placing an investigator upon