Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/263

No. 2.] with sexual hyperaesthesia, sexual impotence (and anaesthesia), and sexual paraesthesia.

The first chapter is devoted to an exposition of onanism, and satyriasis and nymphomania. Most important in this section is the second chapter, which gives more than its title ("Bedeutung der Suggestionstherapie für die Behandlung der krankhaften Steigerung des Geschlechtssinnes") would indicate. The writer insists, rightly, on the necessity of individual treatment of sexual neuropaths; it is quite wrong to attempt to lay down rules in anything more than the barest outline. He takes up a sound position as regards prostitution. On the other hand, he tends to outrun his facts at times; e.g., with reference to the effects of onanism. Chapter III is taken up with the casuistry of suggestive treatment.

The second section follows the plan of the first. Three chapters deal with the pathology of impotence, with the role of suggestive therapeutics in the treatment of functional sexual weakness, and with the casuistry of the subject.

The section on sexual paraesthesia contains chapters headed: the phenomena of sexual perversion, with reference to Krafft-Ebing's theory; the development of the contrary sexual sensation in antiquity; the aetiological importance of heredity and education; dia- and prognosis; psychic and suggestive treatment; casuistry of perversion. The author proposes the terms "active algolagnia" for Sadism, and "passive algolagnia" for Masochism. The current theory of the origin of the contrary sex-sensation (Moll) is rightly criticised. There are sound paragraphs on paedophily among the Greeks. The writer is disposed to ascribe less to heredity than most others who have dealt with sexual perversion. The development of the sex-instinct is depicted in a manner parallel to Wundt's description of that of the nutritive impulse.

As for the main object of the book, – the bringing of proof, that suggestive treatment is successful, where ordinary curative courses are ineffectual, – one must say that though the author has in many respects a strong case, he has not made out all his theses. Much of the casuistry is of too recent a date to be convincing. As patients must be waited for, and those diseases which the physician's hypothesis requires are not always forthcoming, we find some repetition and some lacunae among the cases cited. On the whole, the writer's tone is moderate and his discussions sensible.

E. B. T.

This is an inaugural dissertation which was presented to the University at Freiburg. Although the result does not contain much that is distinctively new, it is seldom that we find so excellent a piece of workmanship compressed into so short a compass. Dr. Tuffts has his problem