Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/74

 66 BOOK REVIEWS

We have here a review of the recent history of medical psychologn,- together -with the present position of that science. It begins with a faultless account of the school of hypnotism and suggestion about which no one is better qualified to write than Dr. ]\litchel]. He then discusses the facts and theory of dissociation, in the light particularly of the work done by Morton Prince and Pierre Janet The rest of the book is almost entirely devoted to Psycho-Analysis and gives a some- what impersonal, exceedingly clear and accurate account of it. We would especially commend to the reader the chapter on the Unconscious, for we know of nothing better written on the subject than this. His account of the different conceptions that have been included under this term, and his distinction between the descriptive and systematic senses in which it is employed by Freud, are unrivalled. Especially worthy to be singled out is also the sane chapter on the prevention of neurotic illness, from which we cannot refrain from quoting the following paragraphs.

'The outcome of a too passionate attachment between mother and son may lead to a similar wreckage of a boy's life. So, also, a too great devotion between brotiier and sister may lead to a failure of both to fulfil their destiny. However beautiful we may consider such devotion to be, we must remember that it is like the pale and delicate beauty of disease and death, rather than that of health and the fulfilment of life. Absorption in the family is a shrinking from the adventure of life ; and to accept the adventure of life should be the privilege and the duty of every human being.'

'And when the children grow up, the parents must be ready and willing to let them go free; to allow them to break from the family and its attachments; to encourage them to seek objects for their love in the outside world rather than selfishly to bind them to themselves and the narrow confines of the home. The respect for filial love and obedience, instilled into our minds from our earliest years, is but an echo of the selfishness of those who, when they are growing old, are unwilling to renounce the gratifications of their youth. The craving for love, as for life, is perennial in humanity. It has its roots in the un- conscious, and like all unconscious cravings it is selfish. And youth must be protected from the selfishness of those who are growing old. Here lies the justification of the poet when he says:

Therefore I summon age To grant Youth's heritage."

The book in our judgement does not call for any adverse criticism, but the following comments may be made on'matters of detail. It is only a partial truth to say of either Janet or Freud that 'they try to explain hysteria entirely in psychological tenns ' (p. 24), for, while the work of both these writers has been mainly psychological, they have been