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Reviews the book, The Diagnosis of Reasoning in the Mentally Retarded by Bärbel Inhelder (1968). This volume is based on the theory and methods that author derived from the earlier years of her long and fruitful collaboration with Piaget. In historical perspective it is obvious that the author's investigation contributed substantive knowledge both to the Genevan search for the laws of intellectual development and to the study of mental retardation. For the contemporary reader, however, this volume's impact lies more in the orientation it espouses than in the now well accepted information it presents. The author presents verbatim transcriptions of the responses of subjects representing the various levels, and she analyzes the reasoning illustrated in these responses. While the profusion of illustrative material is at times repetitive and tedious to read, it is nevertheless instructive to follow Inhelder's acute analyses of these examples. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)