Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/132

 124 BOOK REVIEWS

society more striking than at the present ... It is strikinply plain that

reason has not yet had its day, and that mankind. ... far from having

outgrown logic, has not yet arrived at the stage of general explicit

reasoning, but still acts largely as did its primitive forefathers, on pur- '•

blind intuition or stone-blind instinct." !

As we progress further into the book, however, we learn to our disappointment that in spite of her apparent realisation ol the importance of unconscious factors in moulding thought and conduct, Miss Bradby has contented herself with a study of human motives at a relatively ;

superficial level: she has appeared unable c)r unwilling to apjily the results of her psycho-analytic studies to her present problem, with the result that she has written a book which might have been jiroduced by almost any student of social psychology with but little more than a smattering of psycho-analytic knowledge.

She confines herself almost entirely to the first of the two above mentioned ways in which Psycho-Analysis appears to demand an ex- tension of existing logical doctrine. This is much to be regretted, both because of the immense theoretical importance of the second class of problems and because it would have been of great interest to see how Miss Bradby would have applied in detail her principle that "the rules lof logic are not, as so often said, contradicted in the unconscious or turned topsy-turvy, but merely appliccj to less developed material. The unconscious mind ... has no peculiar logic of its own. All logic is one, that of rational mind continually developing" (p. 47). The workings of the Unconscious appear at first sight to depart so widely from the rules of logical thought that the tracing of a process of continuous develop- ment from the one to tlie other presents a far from easy task, any con- tribution to which would have been extremely welcome, I

Even within the narrower field of the influence of conation and affection on cognition we find, however, scarcely anywhere a reference to psycho-analytic discoveries in the places where they would be appropriate. Thus in dealing with the fear of the dead there is no mention of the mechanism of projected hatred which is so largely responsible for this fear; in treating the motives which impel men to seek wealth there is no mention of the coprophilic origin of many of thtfse motives ; the psychological aspects of Totemism find no place in discussions relating to vegetarianism, man's attitude toward animals and the Lord's Supper; while no considcnition is given to the parent- t regarding or narcissistic tendencies in the treatment of the ideas con- cerning God and Devil. In dius omitting all reference to the psycho- analytic aspects of so much of her subject. Miss Bradby has doubtless made her book eassier to read, but) has at the same time lost a useful opportunity of making a valuable contribution to knowledge — a loss which scientific .students of psychology, logic and social problems, in so