Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/143

 BOOK REVIEWS 135

A quarter of the book is taken up by Part IV, curiously entitled "Lessons of the War". We say "curiously", for, without intending to, the author makes it quite plain that there were no lessons learned from the war. Neither he nor any of the other numerous writers on the subject has yet produced a single idea or any method of treatment that was not well-known before the war. This is no* to say that the account he gives of his experiences in the field (in'>an advanced neur- ological station) do not make interesting reading, but that is quite another matter. We note that the author accepts Freud's view of repression as the cause of dissociation, also in the war cases, though not of course his view that the conflict in the psycho-neuroses (even of peace) is fundamentally a sexual one. As for ti-eatment: "In my view it (the process called by Breuer and Freud "abreaction") is the most helpful therapeutic process in dealing with the majority of war psycho- neuroses" (p. 125).

The last Part, a rather superfluous one, is a conventional account of the various hypotheses concerning the relation of mind to brain.

A list of books of reference is appended^ no works by any psycho- analytical writers except Freud being mentioned.

We trust that in a future edition Dr. Brown will replace the word "push" by "advance" or "attack" (p. 134, 135), for it is not in harmony with the rest of his style. E. J.

Anxiety Hystkria. By C. H. L. Rixon, M.D., M.R.C.S., and D. Mat- thew, M.C., M. B., Ch.B. (H. K. Lewis and Co., London. Pp. 124. Price 4s. 6d.)

This little book, says Col. Sir A. Lisle Webb in his forew^ord, aims at supplying a real need for a brief and straightforward account of the modern views of functional nervous disorders. This aim is only partly fulfilled, for no account is given of the knowledge of these disorders accruing from the psycho-analytic investigation of them. Further, one fails to find that anything other than what has been brought forward during the last two or three years in the more general literature on the subject, apart from the Freudian, has been discovered by the investigations of the two authors.

If the intention of the authors was to expound the modern views, surely those of Professor Freud and his followers should have been included, even if the writers themselves were unable to accept them.

This book in one direction is an advance on so many others of a like nature, in that the authors have eschewed the term "Psycho- Analysis" and use the term "Mental Exploration" for their investigations, in the psychical sphere.