clusions. Indeed, such a view is totally opposed to the findings of psychoanalysis (quite apart from all other considerations that may be put forward), for no other psychological discipline has more strongly emphasised the importance of affective factors, and the relative unimportance of purely cognitive or intellectual ones, in the conduct of life. Moral judgment is a function of intelligence only in so far as it is a process of classifying acts as 'right' or 'wrong,' but moral judgments to be effective in conduct must be prompted by the emotions and based upon the sentiments. It may be true that all moral imbeciles are primarily abnormal intellectually, but this does not carry with it the proof that their moral imbecility is the direct consequence of their abnormal intellect. There may be a concomitant faulty development of the emotional life and an absence of the 'moral sentiments,' and it may be these rather than the intellectual defect which determine the moral imbecility.

In his final chapter Dr Hamblin Smith is chiefly concerned with the reaction of Society towards crime. It is not necessary, he says, that the reaction of Society should for ever take the form known as 'punishment,' and he declares that "this book will have been written in vain if the author has not impressed upon his readers this one moral-not punishment but treatment." Throughout his work he maintains the scientific attitude towards the offender which psychoanalysis requires from those who practise it in the treatment of the neurotic patient: not praise or blame but dispassionate inquiry into the contents of the unconscious. Just as only by finding out where the libido development has gone astray can we solve the problem of neurotic illness, so "to find out why a man does wrong is the only true solution of the problem of delinquency."

The study of individual offenders will reveal to Society its own shortcomings and thus provide an opportunity for reform, for "faulty reaction on the part of an individual to Society may mean that Society has handled him incorrectly." Thus, in Dr Hamblin Smith's opinion, "the study of the offender leads not to despair, but to an enlightened optimism." He believes that the day has come for a re-examination of our penal system and of its bases, in the light of our newer and fuller scientific knowledge and in the hope that we might devise something better."

However this may be we can heartily recommend this book as a propaedutic to all who have the reformer's spirit towards the many problems provided by the relations of Society and the criminal.

T. W. M.

Psychoanalysis and the Drama. By SMITH ELY JELLIFFE and LOUISE BRINK, A.B. Nervous and Mental Diseases Monograph Series, No. 34. Washington, D.C. 1922. $3.00.

There is little to recommend the publication of these papers in the form of a book. It is a collection of ten essays of quite unequal merit, mostly reprints from medical journals, which lose by being brought into juxtaposition. No doubt the few valuable ideas, which are presented over and over again, in relation to different plays and different problems, are impressed by this means on readers to whom they are new.

The first paper originally bore the title "The Physician and Psychotherapy." It stresses the idea that the drama, because it deals with deep human problems, is very helpful to psychological understanding, and further of course, that Psychoanalysis is helpful to a deeper understanding of the drama. The writers

deplore that the ordinary physician knows so little of psychology, and recommends attendance at the theatre as a means of enlightenment upon the obscure problems of the soul.

Not only is the drama recommended for physicians but also for patients. "The hours at the theatre should greatly relieve the strain of repression and... furnish food for thoughtful speculation." It is difficult to see how the drama, per se, which is almost as old as man, and in which it is not easy to discover a "growing intellectual and artistic value" can teach man more than it has ever taught him. In the fourth century B.C. Aristotle spoke of Tragedy as a "catharsis through pity and fear." Again, if Sophocles could not of old time impress upon man the importance of his problem not only with the gods, but with the mother, will the drama of to-day do it more effectually? Is not the expectation that insight will arise from attendance at the theatre a putting of the cart before the horse? Much of the enjoyment experienced at the theatre is the satisfaction that comes from unconscious identification, an automatic process of doubtful psychological value. Undoubtedly pleasure, especially pleasure from the drama, ministers to our well-being; but in the technical sense it cannot remove repression, and the removal of strain is merely through distraction from the problems which press for understanding and solution. While not denying a therapeutic value to the theatre, it is strange that analysts should be at pains to impress these reasons upon the profession and the public, who already avail themselves of them. What psychoanalysis has pointed out is why such tactics generally fail of their aim, and that what is essential is not distraction but analysis. It is a question of making the unconscious conflict conscious to the individual concerned, and it would seem as if the writers consider this a probable or possible result.

The reviewer contends that a person who is unawakened to unconscious processes in life will be very unlikely to detect them in the drama; that physicians will not learn psychology from it if they have not begun to learn it outside the theatre; and that the theatre is no place for our patients to study psychological pathology. Any insight shown in the discussion of the plays enumerated in the book before us comes from a self-conscious study of personality which is derived not from the drama, but from psychoanalysis.

CONSTANCE E. LONG.

NOTES ON RECENT PERIODICALS.

Internationale Zeitschrift für Psycho-Analyse, Vol. VIII, part 1, 1922.

Dr Imre Hermann contributes an article entitled "Marginal notes on the compulsion to repetition." The compulsion to repetition, a conception first elaborated by Freud in Jenseits des Lustprinzips (1920), is treated by Dr Hermann in the following aspects:

(1) its meaning' in the mental structure; (2) its relation to the pleasure principle;

(3) the 'manner' of the repetition.

(1) In order to find the 'hidden meaning' of a mental phenomenon, we ask ourselves the questions: "Whence is it derived?" "What purpose does it serve?" That is to say, that the objective criteria of 'meaning' in such a phenomenon, e.g. a dream or a symptom, are the representation or reproduction of a former situation and the serving of a purpose. Now repetition and purpose secure the continuity of the single psychic individual (personality), and the most primitive method of securing this continuity is that of the compulsory repetition of previous situations. In order that this principle of continuity may be preserved in the case of the instincts with their purposive, yet irrational, character, Freud conceives of the instinct as a force within the living organism, urging it to reproduce an earlier state. This necessitates the extension of the idea of continuity from the individual to the race, and upon this phylogenetic continuity (typical symbols) depends such correctness of interpretation as is possible in the analysis, by means of the subject's own free associations, of the products of other minds.

(2) It is in relation to pleasure-pain as elements of consciousness that the writer considers the compulsion to repetition. According to the Breuer-Freud theory, the question is one of the increase or decrease of excitation in the perceptual (W.; Bw.) and object-memory (Er.) systems. The effect, painful or otherwise, is discussed of simultaneous and repeated stimuli; in the case of the latter the effect varies with the intervals between the repetitions.

(3) Dr Hermann shows that the compulsion to repetition which, as belonging to the primary process, has no regard to time or place, encounters a function of the preconscious system belonging to the secondary process, a function which he terms 'Ordinanz' (will to order). In both the race and the individual, ‘Ordinanz' develops in the service of the reality principle and would appear to be connected with morality, being conspicuously lacking in morally defective children. He suggests that light may be thrown on this connection by a study of pathological manifestations of the primitive compulsion to repetition (faulty development, regression, morbid attraction of anal and urethral erotism).

Dr S. Feldmann's article "On Blushing" is a contribution to the psychology of shame. The first part of the paper is an account of the analysis of a young man, whom he treated for this symptom of blushing, and shows how it was successively found to be related to the patient's 'beauty-complex,' to exhibitionism with urethral erotism, and finally, to the castration-complex, accompanied in this case with repressed homosexual tendencies. Certain significant points emerged in the analysis: the symptom tended to be less troublesome or to disappear, when the patient practised onanism; when this was discontinued, the symptom again became acute. The nose was to him an erotogenous zone; moreover, he endeavoured to motivate his blushing, of which he was painfully conscious, by rubbing and vigorously blowing his nose. From dreams and other evidence it was clear that, by the mechanism of displacement, the face (nose) was standing for the genitals (penis). Deeper analysis revealed at the bottom of all the castration-complex. The patient suffered from a sense of inferiority in respect of the size of his penis and from a dread of castration. Dr Feldmann be

lieves that self-confidence "crystallises itself around the penis" and that "social shame" arises from feelings of inferiority in connection with that organ.

In the second part of the paper, he discusses certain observations of Darwin, Gerson, Havelock Ellis and others on the phenomenon of blushing and concludes that the mechanism of blushing is similar to that of conversion hysteria, that it manifests itself like a compulsion neurosis and that it is an autoerotic libidinal function of the skin. Freud has shown that one of the sources of self-confidence is the remnant of childish narcissism, and this primary narcissism is intimately connected with intactness of the genital organs. In the Unconscious the ego may be identified with the penis (in dreams, folk-lore, etc.). We know also from Ferenczi that there is a universal identification of the ego with the face. Thus blushing (= erection) is a compensation for the injury to self-confidence.

Dr Paul Schilder (Vienna) gives a detailed account of a psychosis following on an operation for cataract. The patient was a woman of fifty-three, whose naturally timid and nervous disposition was accentuated by the disturbance of her sight. Two days after a successful operation for cataract, she became greatly excited and suffered from visual and auditory hallucinations. As time went on, her delusions took two principal forms: that those around her were about to murder or mutilate her, and that birds or beasts were in the room or the bed, attacking her or soiling the bed-clothes, etc. These terrors continued for seven weeks, after which a hypomanic condition set in but gradually abated and finally disappeared. Dr Schilder shows that the operation upon the eye (a frequent symbolic representative of the genitals) roused the patient's castrationcomplex, which he believes to play an important part in post-operative psychoses. Further, he is of opinion that the resolution of a complex may lead to hypomanic states, as in the case of this patient, a view which he has elsewhere put forward. ("Preliminary studies for a psychology of Mania," Zeitschrift f. d. ges. Neur. u. Psych., 68, 1921.)

In a paper on the psycho-analysis of a case of homosexuality, Dr M. Nachmansohn (Königsberg, Pr.) traces the influence of the innate and the acquired factors in a severe case, the analysis of which (lasting in all over 21 years) was conducted in three separate periods, in which it went through three distinct phases. In the first phase, the development of the perversion was traced, its innate character being given special prominence. In the second phase, the incest-complex was revealed as the root of the disease and manifested itself with great force. In the third phase, by means of 'active' therapy, the completion of the cure was effected.

Besides these original articles, this number of the Zeitschrift contains the following communications:

"The Oedipus-dream of a schizophrenic," by Dr Arnold Stocker.

"Father-rescue and father-murder in neurotic phantasies," by Dr Karl Abraham. "Bridge symbolism and the Don Juan legend," by Dr S. Ferenczi.

CECIL M. BAINES

EDITORIAL.

THIS Journal will appear henceforth under the title of The British Journal of Medical Psychology. The change of name has been forced upon us by various circumstances. The old title has been found too cumbersome for purposes of reference, and a failure by authors to distinguish clearly between the General Section and the Medical Section of The British Journal of Psychology has sometimes led to doubt in the minds of their readers concerning the place where certain contributions to our pages may be found. It has further proved difficult to convince some publishers that the General Section and the Medical Section of the Journal are two separate publications and these publishers have consequently been reluctant to send two copies of a book for review to what they considered to be one journal. It has been and will continue to be our custom to review in the Medical Section many books which are noticed, from a different standpoint, in the General Section of this Journal; and it is hoped that the change of title of the Medical Section will obviate the need for repeated assurance to publishers and others that the General Section and the Medical Section of The British Journal of Psychology, although both organs of the British Psychological Society, are nevertheless two entirely separate and independent publications.