AMERICAN ATTITUDES
SIR,-1 am often asked if it is true that in the US attitudes to psychotherapy are really so much more enlightened. Not having been there since 1948, 1 do not know, but having lately read the fantastic legal case at Trenton, New Jersey (not at all in the wilds), where a four-and-a-half-year-old girl's adopted home was accused of being insufficiently cultured for a 'near-genius,' 1 am, convinced that our children's departments here are immeasurably superior. The idea that money and interest in buying books and university education are more important than the love (reported as emotional involvement) and care, dating from the child's tenth month, and More important than the promise of that love con- tinuing seems to me so lunatic as to confirm one's suspicions that if Americans employ more psycho- therapists it is because their need is even greater
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