Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/152

 J44 BOOK REVIEWS

crapulence shows a great similarity to the cyclical psychosis" {JM. der Psychoanalyse, Bd. ffl.. S. 855). Freud also considers that the symptoms of hypochondria, the "third actual neurosis', which cannot be resolved any further psychically, are an accumulation of products of fermentation" of the organ libido, therefore also a sort of mtemal

These and similar passages in the works of the Freudian school are so numerous and so familiar to those conversant with the literature that it may seem unnecessary to make further allusion to them. Still from time to time it is necessary to do this, because our opponents generally suppress these passages-either intentionally or from ignorance ot the facts-in order to bring the unjust reproach against psycho-analysis that it wishes to explain everything from a psychical pomt of view. and denies the biological basis of the neuroses an<l sexuality.

The few passages that have been quoted, which could easily be multiplied tenfold, prove the opposite. A biochemical and biomechanical conception of the processes of life in general, and the sexual ones in particular, lies at the basis of psycho-analysis; but the working out of these problems psycho-analysis leaves for the most part to biologists, and physiologists, because it has no direct access to them itself. On the other hand, psycho-analysis asserts that it possesses a niethod ot in- vestigation and treatment which enables it to analyse into their elements the psychical phenomena accompanying the normal and neurotic sexual processes, to investigate their conflicts with other menta fo^^^^^'to re- construct the developmental history of the mental part of sexuality (the fate of the libido), and to influence psychothcrapeutically this fate. Psycho-analysis can proffer the most valuable conclusions where bio- logical methods have for a long time failed. These conclusions, however, have to bear the fate of all psycho-analytical explanations; they are exceedingly antipathetic to conscious thought, and for this reason there is a tendency-mostly unconscious-to their distortion and mis- interpretation; hence also the relief that is felt at every new physiological discovery, whether it is the Abderhalden specific reaction to organic extracts, or the opening of a new chapter in the theory of the internal secretions. Every time it is hoped that the troublesome thing psychical and its deep investigation— psycho-analysis— will finally be buried

It is to be expected that the publication of the most recent biological investigations on the function of the "puberty glands", which Lipschutz has collected together and systematically presented in this extremely well and clearly written text-book, will leave a similar effect It now appears proved that certain sexual processes can be inhibited, or on the other hand, re-enforced, by physiological and especially by bio- chemical means. We certainly shall not fail to find people who with this somewhat too big physiological gun will assert that the whole ingenious