A Psychologist at Work. By E. Graham Howe. (Faber. 8s.
6d.)' As Mr. Tom Hopkinson claims in his fore- word, Dr. Howe's book has the merit of clarity, and the further merit that it tries to disabuse its readers of the too prevalent view that psychology and psychiatry possess "the answer" to all the ills and short- comings of man. Yet it is in some ways a disappointing little work, too dogmatic, too sure that we" common readers" are indeed common. The men and women of today seem to the present reviewer to be much more interesting and subtle creatures, and to have many more strange and unaccount- • able feelings than Dr. Howe here gives them credit for. Perhaps in our society he can be excused for giving so little attention to the evidences of this more interesting com- plexity—as it is expressed in the formal guise of the arts. Yet surely we have only to observe the play of children or to follow the feelings of a fellow human in the throes of some great experience—of battle, of desperate sickness, of childbirth—to find, in our corrmon humanity, something more, and more strange, than the things for which Dr. Howe gives us pluses or minuses. His general guiding principles are religious ; but even here the tone seems a little lifeless.
- A. W.-E.
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