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sembles that of Adler. And all who have attempted any serious investigation of such a case of childish thefts will agree with its truth. The immense harm which may be occasioned by undue insistence upon the depravity of stealing is forcibly pointed out. These cases are subjects for psycho-therapy, not necessarily by strict psychoanalysis, rather than for stern repressive measures.

From childish theft, we pass on to what, in adults, is properly styled 'kleptomania.' This condition, when existing in its true form, is generally recognized, even by lawyers, as requiring psychological investigation. Dr Stekel shows how widely the condition differs from ordinary theft. The act of stealing brings, as a rule, no joy to the ordinary thief, although there are burglars who take a craftsman's pleasure in their work. Whereas it is the act itself which satisfies the kleptomaniac, who acts in a dreamy state of mind, not unlike that produced by alcohol, in which the distinction between fantasy and reality disappears from consciousness. It is only by a thorough knowledge of the development of mental life, and of the regressions which may occur, that we can deal with this puzzling condition. A wealth of illustrative cases is provided. And one long chapter is devoted to a description of the analysis of a particular kleptomaniac.

Perhaps of even greater interest to the practitioner is the subject of narcotomania. It is urged that all narcotic-drug addicts are persons of impulsive temperament who strive to suppress some unbidden impulse. It is held that nothing but psycho-analysis is of any avail in the treatment of this condition. Certainly the results obtained by other methods of treatment have been most discouraging. But Dr Stekel is at pains to point out that a real desire, on the part of the patient, to get well is an essential factor in the curative process. His views on the psycho-genesis of delirium tremens will not be accepted by all who are familiar with that condition. And we think that scarcely sufficient weight is allowed to the influence of the 'abstinence symptoms' in maintaining a drug addiction, when once such a state has become established. The interesting suggestion is made that the periodicity often observed in true dipsomania may have a mystic and symbolic meaning for the patient.

Pyromania is most adequately considered. Arson has long been a puzzle to criminologists. And it is now realized that this crime, like kleptomania, requires expert elucidation. Dr Stekel, in common with all modern students of this subject, holds that there is no specific arson impulse. The sex element plays a very important rôle. And here again we have to get back to early life. The illuminating suggestion is thrown out that every crime arising from an impulse is really a regression. The relation between alcoholism and arson is complicated. Not only does alcohol tend to remove the inhibitions, but the cause of alcoholism is the same as that of arson. A very full analysis of a pyromaniac is given.

There is an excellent chapter on gambling, a subject of perennial interest. The author points out that a desire to gamble is, in some degree, present in all of us. Perhaps this desire may be specially, although unconsciously, marked in those who condemn the practice most strongly.

Finally, we would mention the chapter on the psychic treatment of 'tics.' These present great difficulties to the practitioner. The author holds that every tic represents a thwarted impulse, an action arrested by the "inhibitive images of the subject's primary personality." Here again we have to look for the sex root of the trouble. It is urged, with the utmost force, that the subject has to discover not merely some form of sex gratification, but some form which is adequately satisfactory to himself. Dr Stekel fully recognizes, what is often overlooked, that the sex act has most important psychical factors, and that it is not merely a physical act. His remarks on masturbation, and on the varied fantasies which always play an essential part in that practice, are of great value.

Dr Stekel endorses the aphorism that "the criminal is the State's greatest crime." He pleads for far more psychological investigation of offenders. In this he is, of course, only following the lines laid down by all modern students in this branch of science. When, however, he deals with certain tendencies which are to be observed in presentday society, we venture to think that he gives an example of the danger (against which he himself warns us) of reading personal complexes into the subjects with which

we deal. But this defect, if such it be, in no way detracts from the great merits of this book. No psychologist, and, above all, no one who deals with offenders, can afford to be without these volumes, on every page of which something illuminating will be found.

The translation has been admirably performed. Had the book been presented anonymously, we think that readers would have taken it as having been written in English. There are a few 'Americanisms,' which we regret to see finding their place in scientific literature. The lack of an index is a grave fault. And placing the notes at the end of each volume, instead of giving them currently, is an inconvenient arrangement. M. HAMBLIN SMITH.

Mental Invalids. (The Morison Lectures, Edinburgh, 1925.) By C. C. EASTERBROOK, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P.E. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd. Pp. 86. Price 58. net. Within these few pages Dr Easterbrook covers a wide field in dealing with the body-mind, the clinical examination of mental invalids, the causation of mental disease with its prevention, its classification, and some aspects and methods of curative treatment. The seeming right attitude is taken that the so-called body and the socalled mind are simply different aspects of a living integrated organism and the psychic, bio-psychic, and energic conceptions of the human organism are discussed. Under the heading of the first named Freudian psychology is briefly sketched. Though we must recognize that integration of the organism is brought about through the nervous system, we hardly like the somewhat intimate linking up of parts of its structure with mental processes which Dr Easterbrook assumes. Thus he speaks of a “mental nervous system and says that "mental diseases are directly attributable to disorders of the nervous system” (p. 33). In the majority of psychoses we can find no such relationship during life or post-mortem. The statements that the constitutional psychoses are specifically diseases of the association areas of the cerebral cortex (p. 60) and that even a mild and curable psychosis means the loss of some cortical neurones (p. 63) cannot be accepted, though the work of Ford Robertson and J. S. Bolton is quoted in confirmation. From this we can understand why the writer regards a 'nervous constitution'—the supposed evidence of which he gives us-as the sine qua non for a mental attack. Causation is spoken of according to the old and well-worn conceptions. Do over-work, sexual excess, frequent child-bearing, over-lactation, and such hygienic stresses, have any relation to mental illness per se except by the possible lowering of inhibitory influences? Classification, too, is treated on the old lines-mania and melancholia being separated, while we have listed such states as stupor, monomania, and impulsion psychosis, which we thought had been practically buried except by officialdom. Among his remarks on curative treatment, rest in bed in the open air is deservedly stressed as of great value in an active psychosis and for the amelioration of restlessness and insomnia. The writer pioneered such therapy nearly twenty years ago, though it is only of late years that it has come much into vogue. Though this small work treats of the subject well in many ways, it is robbed of much of its value by containing a good deal of out-of-date psychiatric conceptions.

C. STANFORD Read.

The Subconscious Self. Its Relation to Education and Health. By the late LoUIS WALDSTEIN, M.D. New Edition. London: Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1926. Pp. lxvii + 171. Portraits. Price 7s. 6d.

The author gave up a considerable practice in New York in order to be free to devote himself to experimental pathology. This being so, the reader may well ask, is the book primarily an addition to the accumulation of psychological data, or to

useful hypothesis, does it throw light on what persons in other branches of science were thinking about psychology (i.e. whether it is useful to the historian) or does it disclose the unfolding of a brilliant mind to a new source of stimuli or its adaptation to new ways of thought?

The book is chiefly of historical interest. It was written in 1894-5 and published in 1898. It is mainly concerned to show that slight or threshold stimuli may affect subconscious moods. It speaks continually in terms of subconscious impressions, but does not (though it discusses the phenomena of post-hypnotic suggestion) give a forceful place to subconscious ideas. It is well in considering this point to place the book in its historical setting, lest at the period of this review, thirty-two years after it was written, its omissions appear serious defects. It was written at a time when the 'debatable phenomena' of the mind were being considered from every angle; in the previous two decades Charcot's clinic and that at Nancy had been demonstrating post-hypnotic suggestion, and the S.P.R. had been founded, William James's Principles of Psychology was published four years before Waldstein's book was written, and the world seemed alive with speculation. Let us take examples from the book: he says (p. 12) that 1/920,000 mgm. of chlorophenol in 1 c.c. of air is perceived by the human sense of smell...."Is it not fair to suppose, therefore, that it is through this sense that our subconscious emotional self is principally affected, and is it not fair to assume that olfactory and tactile sensations are largely accountable for our moods?" Again (p. 19), the influences of subconscious origin "appear to me to be important in forming habits of mind and body, and they are in many cases much easier to detect than are the so-called hereditary peculiarities....Drawn from the depths and the rich material of the subconscious impressions is evolved the emotional, the spontaneous, the passionate man." Later (p. 21), "It would be wrong, however, to attribute to the conscious self active powers alone, and to the subconscious only passive receptive functions; for there are occasions when active and productive results of man's mental energy are directly derived from subconscious sources." He stresses the importance of impressions received in early childhood in the formation of character and in the aetiology of neurosis so that the reader feels he is on the very verge of making the discoveries of Breuer and Freud, but at a word the whole edifice he is constructing comes down with a crash: (p. 52), "the impressions upon the very young are subconscious and vague..." [reviewer's italics]. How could any clinician (unless he was influenced by inner affective resistances, as we now say) regard the infantile impressions as vague? It could only be that the infantile experiences were not examined sufficiently closely. We find also that clinical research is constantly being abandoned just at the point where the solution is to be found. (P. 136), “It is not only from the impressions of early childhood that the subconscious self is fed, and that the degree of impressionability is determined, it is also by such impressions in the later periods of life that this part of the mind is influenced....Among them 'worry' is one of the most general and the most to be feared," and he says that 'worries' are often self-imposed. He assumes that worry is neither analysable into components nor that it too can have origin in these same infantile experiences.

It is only when we come to the brief references to treatment that relaxation of scientific curiosity is seen to blind the author to the most obvious contradictions; he is describing the anxiety dream of a neurotic lady which showed the influence of infantile impressions. He suggests that treatment should consist in meticulous attention to the details of the sick-room so that no subconscious impression may have a depressing effect; old memories leave subconscious scars, and "it will be found that a complete change of scene, after recovery [reviewer's italics], will be the speediest manner of removing those subconscious scars, if not to prevent entirely the depressing stage of convalescence." The scene of an illness may indeed be associated with painful memories, and may cause as deep an impression upon the subconscious self as that of the disease itself" (p. 102). This is not so important, of course, as the impressions causing the disease. An imperative "resort to a radical change of occupation (p. 103), as experience shows, does not and cannot "effect a gradual change in...the composition [of the subconscious], vitiated, as it may be, by influences that reach far back into earliest childhood." His advice on Early Training and Education is

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as irrational as his therapy: (p. 161), "Let the youthful eye rest rather upon the armless Venus of Milo than upon the Venus of Medici...so that his innermost nature may in future years find solace and rest in pure contemplation"--but he says, three pages earlier, "The negress in the Southern States derives the same soothing pleasure from the odour of assafoetida...that the impressionable 'grande dame' finds in the strong scents with which she surrounds herself." But if readers should hastily jump to the conclusion that he makes too fine a distinction between negress and grande dame let them turn to p. 168, where he tells of a lady "who could not have lived [reviewer's italics] through recent and deep family afflictions without her smelling bottle, containing the solid extract of assafoetida, which she held continually in her hand.”

Returning to the list of questions with which the review began, it seems clear that the book contributes only in a small way to the data of psychology or to theory, and that it discloses a brilliant mind quite inappreciative of the developing trends of thought; the meaning of subconscious stimuli, the psychological elaboration of ideas, was consistently neglected. He was not to blame, it was a limitation that many in his generation suffered from and many to this day gladly accept. He concerned himself with only the simplest reflex actions of the mind and proceeded to build up theories which everyday experience ought to have knocked to pieces. The difference between his school of thought and the psychopathologists rests largely on the method employed: the latter paid meticulous attention to the details of the psychical manifestations they were investigating, and pushed their inquiries with endless patience. The book appeared at an important juncture in the history of psychopathology (indeed at its beginning) and shows us clearly by contrast how enormous was the stride taken when dreams and symptoms came to be regarded as something more than manifestations of subconscious moods, representing in a precise way elements of instinctual and ideational mental experience which were not accessible to consciousness, but which more than anything else gave the observer knowledge of the patient and of disease.

J. R.

Mind and Medicine. By THOMAS W. SALMON, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry in Columbia University. New York: Columbia University Press, 1924. (English Agents, Oxford University Press.) Pp. 33. Price 5s.

A plea for a wider outlook; physicians must study the mind with the same energy that they employ in the study of the body. The only names mentioned in connection with enlightening research to this end are those of Cannon and Sherrington.

J. R.

Une Grande Mystique-Madame Bruyère, Abbesse de Solesmes (1845-1909). By ALBERT HOUTIN. Librairie 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 psycho-neurosis in her youth. Afterwards she claimed to have received high mystical graces and wrote a book on mystical prayer.

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. Illustns. 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 races 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.

Professor Gesell suggests the new term 'neonate' for the child during the highly important first month of his sunlit life, and the present reviewer welcomes it and prophesies its general acceptance.

"Whatever the ultimate outcome of the current behaviouristic movement in the field of psychology, it is already clear that this movement will take psychology farther away from its philosophical fixation and bring it into closer relations with physiology and biology....It would appear that the scientific foundations of developmental diagnosis will be medical as well as psychological in the restricted sense of the term. Indeed it is impossible to imagine a fundamental programme in this complicated field without recognizing the partial dependence of developmental diagnosis upon medical science and medical training." From these quotations we see how essentially sound is the author's basal judgment.

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