and every living being. Having disposed of 'a half million years of progress' in two and a half pages, he ultimately arrives at the subject of relativity in psychology, e.g. "that the cravings of man are good or bad, depending on how they are used, to what ends they are put." Curiosity is bad if it occupies itself solely with scandal; it is good if it leads to increased knowledge. This may be called 'relativity,' but why not call it by the old term 'teleological'; for what the illustration shows is not that curiosity is relatively' good or bad, but that it is good or bad according to the end to which it is put. Dr White contrasts the conception of 'sensation' of academic psychology, with the Freudian conception of the 'wish,' characterizing the former as hypothetical constituents of the mind,' conceived under ‘artificially created laboratory situations.' But surely people experienced pains and heat, and sight, long before any psychologist conceived them? If people conceived them why not study them, and if we are to study them why not under laboratory conditions where we may isolate the factors and so determine the essential nature of what we are studying? Freud may be right in maintaining the 'wish' as the fundamental unit in psychology, but it is only fair to the pioneer psychologist to say that whilst he studied sensation more than anything else because it lent itself more readily to experiment, he did not neglect 'conative tendencies' for which the term 'wish' has been substituted by psychoanalysts. The wish by contrast he describes as having replaced the concept sensation because it expresses the direction of the 'whole being,' rather than of an artificially isolated part. Eight lines further on he says that a wish is a "tendency in any direction whatever, no matter how much opposed to the individual's desires." But if the wish is the tendency of the 'whole being' how can it be opposed to the individual's desires? The author writes interestingly on the subject of 'identification,' but here he seems to fall into the common error of not distinguishing real identification, which as the name implies is making two things one, from non-differentiation. He quotes Darwin's case of the infant who does not distinguish between a duck and other birds and called them all 'quack,' but this is non-differentiation and is a very different process from the pupil, he also cites, who identifies himself with the teacher and imitates his voice, etc. There is identity in both cases, but in one the two things have as yet not been distinguished, whereas in the other things that have been distinguished are identified. This distinction is not purely academic but surely affects our conception of a child's identification, for instance, with its father, which plays such an important part in psychopathology.

While following Freud in speaking of the fore-conscious, he follows Jung in dividing the unconscious into the personal unconscious and the racial unconscious. But he gives a timely warning against thinking of the mind as made up of layers, for “we approach every moment with our whole past." Would it not be true to say that we approach every moment with our whole present—for after all when we say we analyse into our past, we are merely using a convenient phrase to indicate that we are analysing deeply into factors at present operating in the patient's life. It is not the patient's childhood that concerns us, but his present state of mind-as affected, no doubt, by his childhood experiences.

The book is clearly written, and it is perhaps inevitable that flaws will be admitted into so concise a statement, which purely as an introduction makes very interesting reading.

J. A. HADFIELD,

Mind as a Force. By C. F. HARFORD, M.A., M.D. London: Geo. Allen and Unwin, Ltd. 1924. Pp. 128. Price 3s. 6d.

This book by Dr Harford, whose death was recently lamented, is a simple exposi tion of mental laws designed for the patient and general reader, rather than for those already conversant either with psychology or psychotherapy. It follows the lines of the associationist psychology and holds to Janet's conception of Dissociation. The author is obviously a firm believer in Coué, and expounds his dubious views as to the contrast of will and imagination, and those of Bandouin as to the "Law of Reversed

Effort." At the same time he accepts such conceptions as Conflict, Repression, and Complexes, although he defines the latter entirely in terms of 'ideas,' apparently without reference to conative or affective factors.

J. A. HADFIELD.

Clinical Psychology. By Louis E. BISCH, M.D., Ph.D. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins Co. (English Agents: Baillière, Tindall and Cox), 1925. Demy 8vo. Pp. xiv + 217 pages of text, and 102 pages of case histories. 17 plates. Price 15s. "The primary object of this book is to give the teacher a working basis by means of which he or she may be able to recognize an atypical child in the classroom and to know how best to handle the situation" (p. xii). In some respects the book does more than this and in some respects less. Its main purpose is to introduce diagnostic technique to its reader and is chiefly devoted to mental tests. A "complete schema for detailed history-taking and examinations" is given with the usual thoroughness of books of this kind under the following headings: history of the patient (at least 200 questions), data of identification (scars, thumb-prints, etc., 3 pages), psychological examinations, physician's examination (about 100 questions), private talk with the patient, home and neighbourhood environment (about 100 questions), and so on.

The chapter on the normal child passes over the interest in excretions and sexual matters that is now regarded by almost everyone as not pathological in small children, but in other respects the chapter is sound if at times obscure. What for example is the meaning of the following sentence: "From 8-9 among girls and from 9-10 among boys there is an actual drop in the specific intensity of life"? (p. 50), and how literally are we to take the technical terms when he says of the puberty period, "the disturbances of the period are essentially connected with the sense of personality, and are emotional exaltations of self-consciousness and whatever is connected with it—such as mania, or depression of personality as it concerns melancholia"? (p. 53). One or two quotations more: (p. 100) "One may look upon constitutional psycho-pathic states as a sort of cross between amentia and psychosis," and (p. 117) “moral perversity in childhood may be due to bodily disease (such as eye-strain, infected teeth and tonsils, etc.), or to physiological causes (menstruation in girls, emotional upheavals incident to adolescence, etc.)." As these quotations show the author has not reduced his psychiatry to a living essence for his readers.

The next part of the book deals with mental tests, and here the author is more at home. He uses quotations from the authorities with great freedom and success, giving as a rule the summaries of the persons he quotes. This is the best part of the book and is valuable because it crams a wealth of information with great lucidness into a minimum of space. He prefers the Binet-Simon test to the Stanford Revision. The fifty-eight case histories give the children's answers to the Binet-Simon test and short family and personal histories as well. To get much from these case histories one has to have experience of the Binet-Simon method.

It is a useful book to have at hand for reference and is well provided with a bibliography.

The 'format' is excellent and the publishers have taken the interesting step of publishing a list "of the members of (their) staff who have contributed their skill of hand and brain to this volume." I am afraid the names convey little to me at present but as a tribute to the craftsmen, whose work is admirable, the innovation is welcome. An imprint gains in meaning when open responsibility is thus shared.

J. R.

The Cinema in Education. Edited by Sir JAMES MARCHANT, K.B.E., LL.D. Being the Report of the Psychological Investigation conducted by special Sub-Committees appointed by the Cinema Commission of Enquiry established by the National Council of Public Morals. London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1925. Pp. 159. Price 78. 6d. net.

The substance of this book presents the report of the two Sub-Committees appointed by the Cinema Commission, the Psychological Research Committee, and the

Cinema Experiments Committee. The latter concerned itself mainly with technical questions regarding the merits of the different forms of projector available for use in schools. The report of the Psychological Research Committee gives a full account of a most important and interesting series of experiments concerned with the value of the cinema as a means of instruction in certain specific directions, the teaching of nature study, and of historical and geographical information. The special problems referred to the Committee were four: (1) The durability of impressions produced by moving pictures in the minds of school-children. (2) The intensity of fatigue caused by cinema instruction. (3) Comparative tests of instruction by cinematographical methods and through normal methods of education respectively. (4) The possibilities of the cinema in cultivating aesthetic appreciation. The first and third of these were taken together, and constitute the basis of the present report. The results are entirely favourable to the cinema as a means of instruction in the directions named. The Committee remarks "The history of the research is one of a strenuous attempt to defeat the cinema on its own ground. This proved, however, to be impossible, for, as clearly shown in the Report, the cinema has, from every point of view, a well-marked advantage for educational purposes." The quality of the research and of the Report is such that this view must be taken as fully established. The Psychological Research Committee dealt with a limited field, one open to exact methods of enquiry and therefore to well substantiated conclusions. One is left with the wish that the wider field of the problem of the general social and intellectual influence of the cinema as the most pervasive form of recreation and of art were susceptible to the same sound methods of investigation.

SUSAN ISAACS.

Statistical Tables for Students in Education and Psychology. By KARL J. HOLZINGER, Assistant Professor of Education, University of Chicago. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1925. Pp. iv + 74.

These tables have been prepared primarily to assist students in making the calculations ordinarily required during a first course in educational and psychological statistics. There is no doubt, however, they would be extremely helpful, at any rate for rough and rapid computations, to the research-worker who has to calculate averages, standard deviations, coefficients of correlation, and to apply the normal curve to the frequency distributions which he obtains. For such preparatory work they save the need for more cumbersome and detailed volumes like Pearson's Tables for Statisticians and Biometricians, Crelle's Rechentafeln, or Barlow's Tables of Squares and Cubes.

The book is compact and handy, clearly printed, and strongly bound. The bulk of the manual consists of tables of squares and square roots, of products and quotients of integers, and of the usual functions of the normal probability curve, similar to those familiar to the ordinary student from the appendices to Thorndike's handbook on Mental and Social Measurements. Other tables give four-place values, both for the probable error of the correlation coefficient and for X1, and for five-place logarithms both of (1 - r2) and of VI - r2 (figures of special use in determining partial coefficients), and the products of integers multiplied by squares of integers for determining standard deviations. A table of four-place logarithms of numbers is also included. The book should be extremely useful both to students in their classroom exercises and to research-workers in the field of educational and psychological statistics.

CYRIL BURT.

Intelligence Testing: Methods and Results. By RUDOLPH PINTNER, Ph.D., Professor of Education in Teachers' College, Columbia University. London: The University of London Press, Ltd., 1924. Pp. vi + 406. 78. 6d. net.

Professor Pintner's book gives an account, as sound as it is simple, of the methods of testing intelligence, and of the results hitherto achieved by the employment of

such tests. The author has designed it primarily for use as a textbook in colleg courses; but it will prove a useful guide to the thousands of teachers who are now becoming interested in the application of psychological methods to the measurement of their pupils' ability.

The book opens with three historical chapters. The first deals with the early history of intelligence testing; the second with the work of Binet; and the third with the more recent developments of the last fifteen years. It is pleasant to find Dr Pintner giving due credit, not only to French and American work, but also to the early investigations of Galton and the later investigations of living English psychologists. This historical survey is followed by a theoretical chapter, which attempts to define the content of general intelligence. Influenced, no doubt, by the views and researches emanating from Columbia, Dr Pintner states that the theory of a common factor of general intelligence 'has not been generally accepted'; and considers that 'the view commonly received' is that of specific abilities showing a high correlation but bound together by no common factor. In Great Britain probably the opposite conclusion would be drawn. In spite of the suggestive criticisms of Brown and Thomson, Spearman's hypothesis of a general factor is the hypothesis that is most widely received; and, as Professor Pintner generously admits, "It is the only theory that has been comprehensively worked out."

""

The second part of the book gives a simple description of the more important individual and group tests. This portion not only describes the chief scales drawn up by various authors from Binet onwards, but also gives a brief but suggestive analysis of the commoner types of material employed. Professor Pintner himself is the author, in collaboration with Dr Paterson, of a new and valuable type of test known as Performance Tests. Nearly all the other tests are predominantly verbal and linguistic. This alone forms a completely standardized scale of a non-linguistic type, a type which appeals equally to the plain and practical man, and to the specialist who is aware of the shortcomings of the ordinary oral or written test. Professor Pintner's modesty and caution, however, prevent him from giving undue prominence to his own special researches.

By far the largest portion of the book deals with the results of intelligence testing. Separate chapters discuss the application of such tests in various directions-to the feeble-minded and the genius, to the child, the student, and the adult employee, to the delinquent and the dependent, to the deaf, the blind, the Negro, and the foreignborn. These chapters form a valuable summary, sound and systematic, of the results so far obtained. Hitherto the results have been left in scattered books and periodicals; and it is extremely helpful for the student to have them brought together, colated and criticized in a single handy volume. The book concludes with a short chapter on "The Inheritance of Intelligence."

Each chapter of the book is followed by a useful bibliography of the subject with which it deals. Every page is readable, written in a clear and sober style contrasting favourably with so many American writings on Educational Psychology. The volume is clearly printed and pleasantly bound. A brief but brilliant little preface has been written by Dr Ballard specially for the English edition. As Dr Ballard writes: "The appeal of the book is not confined to the teacher: it extends far beyond the walls of the school. It should meet a response in all those who deal with human material, al those who wish to understand people before they try to benefit or to better them." CYRIL BURT.

Une Grande Mystique-Madame Bruyère, Abbesse de Solesmes (1845-1909). By ALBERT HOUTIN, Libraire Felix Alcan. Paris, 1925. 20 fr. net. Pp. vii + 316. The main part of this account of the life and influence of Mme Bruyère is the duplicate of a report made to the Inquisition in 1892 by a monk of Solesmes (dom Sauton, a doctor) who was at one time under her influence but afterwards distrusted her methods and finally denounced her. This report is preceded by a biography of

the abbess written by M. Houtin which is no less severe in its judgment of her than is the report of dom Sauton. This book must therefore be considered as a presentation of the case of the prosecuting attorney and not as the summing up of the judge.

The future abbess appears to have shown signs of psychoneurosis in her youth. Afterwards she claimed to have received high mystical graces and wrote a book on mystical prayer.

1 The most remarkable thing about her life is, however, the way in which she used her reputation for sanctity as a means of dominating the minds and lives of other persons, particularly the monks of Solesmes. This domination was attained by means of long and frequent interviews in which the abbess claimed to train her disciples in the mystical life. The training involved a complete acceptance by the monk of a rôle of infantility in which the abbess took the place of mother. She treated the monk as a little child, giving him a new childish name, addressing him as "Mon cher petit...," and she encouraged him to use the same familiarity in his address to her. The greater number of the monks accepted the claims of the abbess, and her domination over the abbey became complete when a new abbot was chosen who accepted without reserve her spiritual motherhood. A few others (like dom Sauton) after a period of this voluntarily accepted infantility saw its dangers and began to suspect a mysticism which showed so little signs of bearing the fruits of virtue and humility traditionally attributed to mysticism. These doubters provoked in the abbess a resentment as great as her former favours.

There is little in this picture of Mme Bruyère which justifies the author's title of "Une Grande Mystique." The subjugation of the self-regarding sentiment is a part of the ascesis of the greater mystics of which Mme Bruyère had apparently no idea. Perhaps she started with the psycho-physical disposition out of which a mystic might have developed, but her undisciplined egoism which could bear no breath of criticism and her craving for power which knew no limits (at least in phantasy) carried her along a different road of mental development.

It is to be regretted that the part of dom Sauton's report dealing with the medicalpsychological aspects of Mme Bruyère should have been omitted by the editor for reasons of delicacy.

R. H. THOULESS.

The Mental Growth of the Pre-School Child: A Psychological Outline of Normal Development from Birth to the Sixth Year, including a System of Developmental Diagnosis. By ARNOLD GESELL, Ph.D., M.D., Professor of Child Hygiene, Director of Yale Psycho-Clinic, Yale University. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1925. Pp. x +447. Illstns. 228. Price: $3.50.

This is the first step of adequate extent really to count toward the formulation in definite terms of the measurement of mental development during the first three years, the following three being already roughly measurable by the Binet-Terman scale. It is during these six years that developmental defects and deviations come to the pediatrist, neurologist, and general practitioner for early diagnosis and treatment and therefore the profession can hardly fail to welcome warmly this pioneer six-year research of Professor Gesell. This greeting will be all the more sincere because the diagnostic norms and procedures have been "presented in such a manner that they can scarcely be misapplied"-guaranteed to be fool-proof, in other words. Parents, too, and kindergarteners will find it of surpassing interest, in part because of its 'action-photographs' of young children of various race in the collegiate city of New

Haven.

The thirty-eight chapters of the work are divided into four parts, entitled respectively "Introductory," "Norms of development," "Comparative studies of development" and "Developmental diagnosis and supervision," the third being the largest. There also are a preface and the necessary index, the latter not by any means complete.