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Originally published in 1965 this book was an introduction to post-Freudian methods of diagnosing and treating neurotics of the time. These methods were known collectively as ‘behaviour therapy’, a term indicating their derivation from modern behaviourism, learning theory, and conditioning principles. In the early twentieth century John B. Watson pointed out that ‘psychology, as the behaviourist views it, is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behaviour.’ Behaviour therapy attempts to extend this control to the field of neurotic disorders, and in doing so it makes use of experimental laboratory findings, and of theories based on these. It was seen as the very opposite of the position taken by psychoanalysis. The authors believed that, by the late twentieth century, behaviour therapy would be ‘firmly established as one of the most important, if not the most important, weapon in the hands of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists’.

The brain is the most complex organ in our body. Indeed, it is perhaps the most complex structure we have ever encountered in nature. Both structurally and functionally, there are many peculiarities that differentiate the brain from all other organs. The brain is our connection to the world around us and by governing nervous system and higher function, any disturbance induces severe neurological and psychiatric disorders that can have a devastating effect on quality of life. Our understanding of the physiology and biochemistry of the brain has improved dramatically in the last two decades. In particular, the critical role of cations, including magnesium, has become evident, even if incompletely understood at a mechanistic level. The exact role and regulation of magnesium, in particular, remains elusive, largely because intracellular levels are so difficult to routinely quantify. Nonetheless, the importance of magnesium to normal central nervous system activity is self-evident given the complicated homeostatic mechanisms that maintain the concentration of this cation within strict limits essential for normal physiology and metabolism. There is also considerable accumulating evidence to suggest alterations to some brain functions in both normal and pathological conditions may be linked to alterations in local magnesium concentration. This book, containing chapters written by some of the foremost experts in the field of magnesium research, brings together the latest in experimental and clinical magnesium research as it relates to the central nervous system. It offers a complete and updated view of magnesiums involvement in central nervous system function and in so doing, brings together two main pillars of contemporary neuroscience research, namely providing an explanation for the molecular mechanisms involved in brain function, and emphasizing the connections between the molecular changes and behavior. It is the untiring efforts of those magnesium researchers who have dedicated their lives to unraveling the mysteries of magnesiums role in biological systems that has inspired the collation of this volume of work.

2012 Reprint of 1941 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Most PTSD authors agree that Abram Kardiner's "Traumatic Neuroses of War" is the seminal psychological work on PTSD. In this work Kardiner distilled much psychiatric thought on the traumatic syndrome resulting from World War II, with what he had termed "neurosis of war." The symptoms of this syndrome included features such as fixation on the trauma, constriction of personality functioning and atypical dream life. Kardiner provided powerful new insights in these classic texts on the phenomenology, nosology, and treatment of war-related stress, thereby anticipating virtually every aspect of contemporary research on PTSD. Although Kardiner had observed war neuroses since 1925, when he was attending specialist at the U.S. Veterans Hospital, he was only able to theorize them to his satisfaction after he had written "The Individual and His Society," which dealt with the problems of adaptation. He came to see that in the traumatic neurosis of the war the defensive maneuver to ward off the trauma sometimes destroyed the individual's adaptive capacity. Thus, the traumatic neurosis of war was the result of an adaptive failure, not a conflictual illness. So concluding, Kardiner re-introduced the concept of traumatic neurosis into psychoanalytic theory.

Anxiety may be debilitating or stimulating; it can result in neurotic symptoms or in improved, heightened performance in an actor or athlete. It is something every human being has experienced. As Professor G. M. Carstairs points out in his Foreword: 'During the course of the twentieth century we have found it progressively easier to concede that we are all to often swayed by emotion rather than reason. We have come to recognize the symptoms of neurotically ill patients are only an exaggeration of experiences common to us all, and hence that the unraveling of the psychodynamics of neurosis can teach us more about ourselves'. Although Charles Rycroft is also a psychoanalyst, it is as a biologist that he has made this study of anxiety, the three basic responses to it - attack, flight or submission - and the obsessional, phobic and schizoid and hysterical defenses. Written in precise but everyday language, Anxiety and Neurosis is based on adult experiences rather than the speculative theories of infantile instinctual development. Its clarity and authority can only add to Dr Rycroft's established international reputation.

"Many medical men, who had previously held themselves aloof from psycho - analysis, have been brought into close touch with its theories through their service with the army compelling them to deal with the question of the war neuroses. The reader can easily gather from Ferenczi's contribution to the subject with what hesitation and misgivings this advance was made. Some of the factors, such as the psycho-genetic origin of the symptoms, the significance of unconscious impulses, and the part that the primary advantage of being ill plays in the adjusting psychical conflicts ("flight into disease"), all or which had long before been discovered and described as operating in the neuroses of peace time, were found also in the war neuroses and almost generally accepted. The war neuroses, in so far as they differ from the ordinary neuroses of peace time through particular peculiarities, are to be regarded as traumatic neuroses, whose existence has been rendered possible or promoted through an ego-conflict. In Abraham's contribution there are plain indications of this ego-conflict; the English and American authors whom Jones quotes have also recognised it. The conflict takes place between the old ego of peace time and the new war-ego of the soldier, and it becomes acute as soon as the peace-ego is faced with the danger of being killed through the risky undertakings of his newly formed parasitical double." [...] This book on psycho - analysis and war neuroses is a reprint of the originally published book from 1921.