The Schizophrenic Syndrome

Assisted on this occasion by coeditor Laurence Loeb and by 24 other contributors, Leopold Bellak has fashioned the third of his "Inside Schizophrenia" books. This edition, approximately twice that of the first venture (1948), summarizes the literature of the past decade, through 1967. The bibliography has some 4,500 titles, yet the feeling remains that we know very little more about the core of the disease. The section on treatment constitutes a major difference between the two editions. The first edition devoted some 200 pages, or almost half the book, to insulin, electroshock, and other somatic therapies; the current volume has 20 pages on this subject. Leo Alexander continues to support insulin-coma therapy and presents a graph which apparently illustrates the superiority of insulin coma and reserpine, as well as custodial management, over chlorpromazine. Elsewhere, however, the following statement appears: "Any phenothiazine is better than no phenothiazine in the treatment of