PSYCHOLOGY.* A YOUNG science is like a very young man,

it displays a certain

self-satisfied uppishncss, a tendency to assume that it has established a corner in knowledge. The New Psychology has in recent years been passing through this stage, but nowadays there are welcome signs that it is settling down into a saner condition among its fellow sciences. Its growth has followed the normal course. As in the case of other sciences, we noticed in its earlier stages a strong tendency to dogmatize, to collect certain undoubted facts and to build upon them some very doubtful theories. This was the more pardonable, the more inevitable, because the facts obtained were sometimes so amazing that the desire (a perfectly legitimate desire) to try to explain them was irresistible. But if the desire to explain is legitimate, the explanations offered were not always so, and to-day we find that a revolt is spreading against some of the earlier theories. The facts are being shown to be capable of other explanations, and in some of the theorists— notably in Freud himself—there is an honourable and dis- interested willingness to abandon theories so soon as they show signs of obstructing the truth.

Professor Baudouin's Studies in Psychoanalysis' is sympto-

matic of the new attitude. It questions some of the older theories in the light of more recent experience and it shows a perfect frankness in displaying the arguments, not only for but also against any alternative theories which it may suggest. Systematization, Professor Baudouin holds, is the bane of psychoanalytic science ; the only sure method is conscientious investigation. This is not so easy as it sounds, for, as Professor Baudouin points out, " simply by recording a fact we interpret it ; and language is a web of interpretation. When, therefore, the reader comes across a functional inter- pretation which seems to him to lack adequate verification, let him prefix the words : ' Everything happens as if . . "

Psychoanalytic science, more especially among amateurs, tends to regard every case as pathological, till society becomes a vast company of more or less harmless neurotics and lunatics. Professor Baudouin, however, follows the New Nancy School in envisaging a normal humanity among which certain morbid modifications occur. He differs, too, from other psychoans:ysts in employing suggestion concurrently with analysis, and his book puts forward a very good case for this method. Various objections have been brought against suggestion : there is still the remnant of a feeling that it savours of the occult and magical, and it has been argued that it is " a repression followed by a disastrous derivation." " The rejoinder," says Professor Baudouin,

" is supplied by one of the laws of subconscious activity, a law which is quite as important as the laws of repression and derivation. I have formulated it as the law of subconscious teleology, and it is confirmed every day by the practice of autosuggestion. The law runs as follows : Suggestion acts by subconcious teleology ; when the end has been suggested, the subconscious finds means for its realization.' " Professor Baudouin argues, and we think truly, that whether it is intended or not, suggestion is unavoidably exercised by the analyst on his patient.

" However much the analyst may wish to ignore suggestion, he cannot help himself in this matter, and . . . he would act much more wisely were he to recognise that he is making suggestions, and to attempt to guide them. By adopting transference, by admitting with good reason that a relationship of deep sympathy arises between subject and analyst, psychoanalysts have adopted suggestion willy-nilly. Those who proceed to renounce suggestion are like the child who wanted to go to the Midnight Mass if only it could be celebrated in ttv daytim- ! "

The latter part of Professor Baudouin's volume contains

• (1) Studies in Psychoanalysis. By C. Baudouin. London: Allen and Unwin. ll2a. 6d. net_}--(2) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. By Siam. Freud. Same publisher. (6a. net. 3) Signs of Sanity. By Stewart Paton, M.D. London: Scribners. lls. 6d. net. —(4) The New Psychology and the Parent. By H. Crichton Miller, MA., M.D. London: Jerrold& (6a. net.)—(5) Medical Psychology and Psychical Research. By T. W. Mitchell. London: Methuen. C7a. 6d. net.)---(6) lareiangering and Forgetting. By T. H. Pear. Same publieher and price. twenty-seven specific case-histories, which give a practical and

human interest to a very suggestive book.

Beyond the Pleasure Principk,i by Professor Freud, is No. 4 of the studies published in the excellent " International Psycho- Analytical Library " under the editorship of Dr. Ernest Jones. It consists of about eighty pages of close reasoning and inter- esting conjecture based on certain physiological and psycho. logical facts and, though not excessively difficult or technical, is not a book for beginners. In the psychoanalytical theory of the mind," says the author, " we take it for granted that the course of mental processes is automatically regulated by the ' pleasure-principle ' : that is to say, we believe that any given process originates in an unpleasant state of tension and thereupon determines for itself such a path that its ultimate issue coincides with a relaxation of this tension, i.e., with avoidance of ' pain ' or with production of pleasure."

Now if the pleasure-principle were to act simply and directly in face of the difficulties and complications of external life, it would soon land us in difficulties. It is, therefore, modified by the " reality-principle," which enables us to acquiesce in the postponement of pleasure with a view to attaining to it eventually with safety and in accordance with external realities. In the reality-principle, however, it is unnecessary to see anything more than a subtle and sage adjustment of the pleasure-principle. But careful investigation brings to light a phenomenon which seems to be incapable of explanation by the pleasure-principle. Such a phenomenon appears in the play of children, the dreams of shock-patients, and in certain characteristic experiences, which repeat themselves in the ease of neurotics. This has been called the " repetition- compulsion."

In the case of certain shock-patients, their dreams take them back regularly and without disguise to the situation of the disaster which caused the shock : children in their play re-act not only experiences which were pleasant, but also those which were disagreeable : and everyone knows the type of person to whom (really by his own action) a typical experience repeatedly occurs, such as the ingratitude or desertion of his dearest friends.

Now, it is difficult to see how this repetition-compulsion- this instinct to hark back to disagreeable experiences—can be the result of the pleasure-principle. " But all that the pleasure-principle has not yet acquired power over is not therefore necessarily in opposition to it, and we have not yet solved the problem of determining the relation of the in- stinctive repetition processes to the domination of the pleasure-principle." Professor Freud's study is notable for the clearness and honesty of his argument and for his readiness, which we have already mentioned, always to sacrifice theory in the interests of truth.

Dr. Stewart Paton's and Dr. Crichton Miller's books are both for the uninitiated, being simple and free from techni- calities. In his present books Dr. Paton, whose Human Behavior we reviewed not long ago, has written an informative

little treatise on Mental Hygiene. As in his larger work, ho insists on the absolute necessity of regarding body and mind

as a single corporation and warns us against isolating any one member of that corporation—brain, heart, mind, or any other detail—and treating it as a unit apart from the whole in which it functions. The book contains much useful information, both physiological and psychological, applied in a broad and far-seeing spirit. Dr. Paton's aims and advice are always positive and creative. " The sublime faith we have in the

efficiency of inhibitions," he says, " is one of the greatest dangers to our civilization." The leader who wishes to learn something of the mechanism of body and mind will find the book clear and instructive.

The rapid advance in physiology and psychology in recent years is resulting in a flood of such books—books, that is, which are intended to help us to understand ourselves and our fellow mortals. The New Psychology and the Parent,' by Dr. Crichton Miller, is another of them. It sets out to place before the reader of ordinary intelligence " the irreducible minimum of the New Psychtilogy in the simplest possible terms " as regards children and their treatment. The book is to be strongly recommended to parents. It is clear, healthy, and full of valuable information on the subject of Childs psychology, which cannot fail to be of great practical use.

The title of Dr. T. W. Mitchell's Medical Psychology and Psychical Research5 will be somewhat misleading to manj

people, because the studies which it contains deal for the most part with hypnotic and hysterical subjects and cases of multiple personality, whereas Psychical Research has come— arbitrarily, we admit—to connote, for the ordinary man, the investigation of ghostly and spiritualistic phenomena. The studies range in date from 1907 to the present day. Most of them deal with specific cases of abnormal psychology. The first is the record of patient investigations of the extraordinary sense of time displayed by certain hypnotic subjects. The patient, for instance, is told during hypnosis to perform a certain action in 7,200 minutes' time. After the proper interval—in this case, five days—the patient complies. Numerous experiments on these lines, many of them extremely complicated, are successfully carried out, apparently without any difficulty on the part of the patient. There is an inter- esting study of an hysterical subject. The phases are given in detail, but their significance is not explained, though we are told that the disorder was cured by analysis. Several chapters deal with cases of multiple personality, among which psychology-readers of long standing will meet once more their old acquaintance Miss Beauchamp. Though the book contains little that is new, it provides fascinating reading in one of the most intriguing branches of psychology.

Professor Pear's Remembering and Forgetting6 originated in lectures on this subject delivered to officers of the R.A.M.C. with the object of enabling them " to estimate the abnormality of these functions in their patients." The book does not attempt to deal exhaustively with the subject—indeed, at the present stage of knowledge it is impossible to do so—but it discusses certain sides of it and—as Professor Baudouin has done—sets out to link up normal psychology with psycho- analysis. The book is well within the reach of the ordinary reader : it is full of interesting matter and never dry. Among a variety of other things, Professor Pear discusses Kinaesthesis, Dreams, and Coloured Hearing, with a reference to Scriabin and his scheme for an accompaniment of coloured light effects to his " Prometheus." The chapter on " The Respectability of Muscular Skill " is one of the most suggestive of all. Professor Pear develops the theory that muscular skill—the skill of the athlete and the craftsman—" has a higher intel- lectual value than is usually assigned to it, and that this value is susceptible of being increased considerably."

The mind of the ordinary reader is like a rabbit hedged within walls of wire-netting, for whom the most welcome writer is he who can extend his run for him and take in a patch of fresh grass. This is the function of the great imaginative artists, but it is the function also of science and philosophy, and Professor Pear's book is one of these liberators.