4 OCTOBER 1924, Page 32

SHORTER NOTICES.

A NEGLECTED COMPLEX. By W. R. Bousfield. (Kegan Paul: 4s. 6d. net.) When psycho-analysts impute so much of our life to the " unconscious," they run a grave risk of denying our moral responsibility ; and the Freudian psychologists, on the whole, do represent man as not responsible for his impulses and only able to attain to the social virtues by subterfuge. Mr. W. R. Bousfield shows very ably the result of this error—how it causes' a " repression " of moral standards, and associated ideas, the ideas of God, of free will, and of any Judgment upon our actions. He explains how the defeat of moral standards in the struggle with sexual impulse gives rise to the Materialistic Complex : how the idea of-responsibility is shut away from the mind as too painful to be borne, and, in consequence, the victim of the complex is fortified against all evidence and all argument which run counter to his complex. In Freud, especially, Mr. Bousfield observes this illogicality. This book should be read by everyone who wishes to approach psycho-analysis with an open mind ; and it will help those who feel terrified at the materialism and determinism of the Freudians to keep a true perspective of the subject.