Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/72



important study is based on a first-hand experience of cases of mental disorder caused by the war. Many of these were successfully treated by means of a psychotherapy based on a theory of the "unconscious"; and the object of the present work is to elucidate that theory, and more especially to explore its biological foundations. Incidentally, a great deal of attention is paid to nomenclature. The proposed terminology is primarily intended for the pathologist, and it may be therefore that it will not always prove equally suitable for the psychologist whose interest is in the normal as distinguished from the morbid features of mental action. Again, it must be remembered that the subject of the unconscious is treated almost exclusively in the light of the special characteristics of the war-neuroses; so that, possibly, an enlarged base of observation—one, for instance, that considered aberrations of the sex-instinct side by side with those of the fear-impulses—might introduce complications into the scheme of categories here employed. Regarded, however, as a contribution to mental science from a limited but well-defined point of view, the book is a masterpiece of clear thinking. As such it will help greatly to overcome the natural obscurity of the subject, providing as it were a night-glass that brings out sharp out- lines in a crepuscular region.

The very word "unconscious" notoriously lends itself to ambiguity. All must admit, however, that mind includes