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    Book Reviews: The Psychology of Anxiety, Staples Press LTD., London, 1968. 36

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    Tanushree B
    The document discusses a book about the psychology of anxiety. It summarizes the book's attempts to define anxiety and related terms, and its discussion of various theoretical views and experimental research on anxiety. While comprehensive, the review notes the book attempts to cover too much material in its length and has some simplifications and omissions. It would serve as a useful introduction for those wanting a short overview of the large field of anxiety research.

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    Book Reviews: The Psychology of Anxiety, Staples Press LTD., London, 1968. 36

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    Tanushree B
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    The document discusses a book about the psychology of anxiety. It summarizes the book's attempts to define anxiety and related terms, and its discussion of various theoretical views and experimental research on anxiety. While comprehensive, the review notes the book attempts to cover too much material in its length and has some simplifications and omissions. It would serve as a useful introduction for those wanting a short overview of the large field of anxiety research.

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    mathews1969

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    The document discusses a book about the psychology of anxiety. It summarizes the book's attempts to define anxiety and related terms, and its discussion of various theoretical views and experimental research on anxiety. While comprehensive, the review notes the book attempts to cover too much material in its length and has some simplifications and omissions. It would serve as a useful introduction for those wanting a short overview of the large field of anxiety research.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    35 views1 page

    Book Reviews: The Psychology of Anxiety, Staples Press LTD., London, 1968. 36

    Uploaded by

    Tanushree B
    The document discusses a book about the psychology of anxiety. It summarizes the book's attempts to define anxiety and related terms, and its discussion of various theoretical views and experimental research on anxiety. While comprehensive, the review notes the book attempts to cover too much material in its length and has some simplifications and omissions. It would serve as a useful introduction for those wanting a short overview of the large field of anxiety research.

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    of 1

    Journalof Psychosomatic

    Research,Vol. 13, pp. 397 to 39s. PergamonPress,1969 Printedin NorthernIreland

    BOOK REVIEWS

    EUGENE E. LEVIIT: The Psychology of Anxiety, Staples Press Ltd., London, 1968. 36/-.

    POPULAR concern with anxiety is probably more widespread now than ever before: it is both ‘the
    most pervasive psychological phenomenon of our time’ and ‘the official emotion of our age’. Another
    reason for the increasingly central importance of anxiety in psychology lies in its promise to bridge
    the gap between the experimental construct of drive, and clinical observation of morbid anxiety.
    One of the earliest attempts to do this, resulting in Taylor’s construction of the Manifest Anxiety
    Scale, has been implicated in the explosion of publications on the subject through the 195Os, which
    despite the failure to fulfil that early promise, continues unabated to the present day. Spielberger [l]
    notes that at the time of his survey (up to 1963) publications listed under ‘anxiety’ in the Psychological
    Abstracts had increased tenfold since 1930, to an average of about 130 entries each year. At the time
    of writing, the latest completed index (1967) shows a further increase to over 200 entries for that year.
    Yet, after all this labour, it must be confessed that there is still little agreement on the problem of the
    measurement of anxiety, or even on its definition.
    The Psychology of Anxiety begins with a commendable attempt to stem the confusion resulting
    from the proliferation of undefined concepts by discussing and delimiting the use of terms such as
    stress, tension, fear, phobia, state- and trait-anxiety. The author then proceeds to deal with thecretical
    views of anxiety(confined to Freudian and ‘learning theory’viewpoints), its experimental measurement
    using psychological and physiological techniques, effects on cognitive processes and the relationship
    of anxiety with personality and the problems of everyday life. This may seem too much to discuss
    comprehensively and adequately in a book of 250 pages, and it is. There is considerable evidence of
    the necessity to compress discussion and select references, sometimes leading to oversimplification.
    Notable omissions include any mention of pathological anxiety, apart from presenting the Freudian
    model, and there is no discussion of the factor analytic studies of Cattell or Eysenck. Theoretical
    ideas about anxiety are presented in a balanced and impartial way, and in as far as the author’s views
    are apparent they would seem to resemble a synthesis of Freudian ideas and learning theory & la
    Dollard and Miller:-sufficient acceptance of unsubstantiated analytic theory to annoy the behav-
    ioural scientist; enough emphasis on the necessity of controlled laboratory investigation to irritate
    the dynamic clinician. There is no attempt to put together all the experimental findings in one
    conceptual framework, they are simply summarised at the end of each chapter, and briefly criticised
    in a final discussion.
    In the end, the usefulness of any book depends on the audience to whom it is addressed. The
    experimentally sophisticated behavioural scientist or clinician may well be dissatisfied with the
    occasional lack of depth and critical evaluation of experimental work, and by the omission of
    experimental studies of pathological anxiety. On the other hand, as a short introduction to the vast
    and growing field of research related to anxiety, it will perform a useful function for the psychologist
    or psychiatrist finding it difficult to keep up with a mushrooming literature.
    A. MATHEWS
    REFERENCE
    SPIELBERGER
    C. Anxiety and Behavior, Academic Press, New York (1966).

    J. CREMERIUS: Die Prognose funktioneller Syndrome. Ein Beitrag zu Ihrer Naturgeschichte. (The
    Prognosis of Functional Syhdromes. A Contribution to Their Natural History.) Ferdinand Enke,
    Stuttgart 1968. 134 pp., no price stated.
    To EXAMINEthe prognosis of patients with functional syndromes, Dr. Cremerius and his collaborators
    carried out a detailed and painstaking follow-up study after 9-11 yr of patients who had attended the
    University Out-Patient Clinic in Munich in the three yrs from 1949 to 1951. Among them had been
    2330 with functional syndromes of at least two yr duration.
    At the time of the follow-up only 28 per cent of the original patients could be contacted by post.
    This small percentage is not surprising as many of the original patients had been only temporary
    residents in Munich during the unsettled post-war years in Germany. Of those contacted, only
    397

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