The authors do attempt to limit their definition of nymphomania to the compulsively promiscuous and non-selective female, driven by her fears and anxieties to an ever-recurring need for sexual relations with anything in pants. They distinguish between this "true" nymphomaniac, and the powerfully sexed but selective woman who exercises discrimination although remaining determinedly promiscuous. This distinction could have been more clearly maintained in the chapter describing famous "nymphos" of history, in which Messalina, George Sand and the Empress Theodora are considered through the eyes of gossipy memoir writers rather than by scientific observers. Even the authors slip occasionally, and term as nymphomaniacs various other types of promiscuous women.

The moral, if one may call it that, of this work seems to be that the compulsively promiscuous woman should be given extensive psychotherapy to overcome her fears and ritual compulsions. (One case subject insisted on having her men in a certain order: first an Italian, then a Greek, then an Armenian, then a Jew, then a Negro, and so on until she had completed her self-prescribed list, before rotating again to another Italian.) One should not consider all promiscuous women or prostitutes as nymphos. Some may be Donna Juanites trying to pay off Don Juans. Those who really want to overcome their compulsions may do it by finding the properly understanding-and necessarily long-enduring homosexual "adjustment partner," under the eagle-eyed guidance of a therapist like Dr. Ellis.

But society must adjust too, to both "homo" and "nympho" trying to overcome their compulsions. The final paragraph of the book states:

"A few women suffer from nymphomania or compulsive promiscuity. But many many more suffer from lack

of sexual freedom, from condemnation of their free lives. . . When sexually alive women are fully accepted, and are not considered oversexed trollops, much of the anguish will be relieved."

Which restates the question raised by much of Dr. Ellis' previous work: Which is more sick, the morally constipated society, or the free-living individual?

Dean Franklin

AN HONORABLE ESTATE, by Lane Kauffmann, J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia-New York, 1964, $5.95, 424 pp.

This highly readable novel begins with the engagement party of Vicky Fortescue and ends with her marriage some three months later. Using an ages-old story teller's device, Mr. Kauffmann introduces to us, one by one, each of the important personalities gathered together at this party and proceeds to follow their activities throughout the following months. In this manner the author sketches a complex of modern New York society and a variety of human beings. From beginning to end the novel is absorbing as it leads us from one person to another and from one situation to another in our quest to find out what is going to happen next.

As might be expected in such a cross section of society, there would have to be at least one queen and Mr. Kauffmann does not disappoint us. Eliot Clay, the half-brother of one of the more important characters, a homosexual and a writer of risque songs for supper club entertainers, is "our" queen. His appearance is limited to a few brief scenes-scarcely more than three or four pages in the entire novel-but his personality is deftly and sharply drawn, with, I am happy to say, none of the condescension or prejudice which usually accompanies the creation of a character of this type.