Reviews and Abstracts

Abstract

Studies in Mental Deviations. By Professor S. D. Porteus. Vineland, N.J. : Publications of the Training School. 1922. Price $4. Early in 1919 Professor Porteus came from Australia to the United States to succeed Dr. H. H. Goddard as Director of the PsyehologiC&1 Laboratory of the Vineland Training School. His book now published brings together the results of his various researches during three years' tenure of that office. His Material, however, is drawn, not only from Personal investigations carried out within that period, but also from all the data amassed bY the Laboratory during the past fifteen years. As he himself insists, both the Vineland School in America, and all workers and institutions throughout the world that ha\ e to deal with the mentally defective, are indebted, directly or indirectly, to the support ?f Mr. Samuel Fels, of Philadelphia, who, ^vith the generosity so characteristic of his country, has financed the Laboratory throughout the years of its existence. ?Dr. Porteus opens his book with a new and suggestive definition of mental deficiency: A feeble-minded person is one who by reason ?f mental defects, other than sensory, cannot attain to self-management and self-support to the degree of social sufficiency." He states that he and his colleagues "have never seen a moral imbecile, meaning by that a person ^hose only distinguishable defect is a lack of So-called moral sense." In this his experience is in close accord with that of British Psychologists. At the same time, it will be observed that his definition is specifically ramed to include those extreme cases of ^otional instability which certain writers in