Book Notices

AN APPLICATION OF PSYCHOANALYSIS TO EDUCATION. By Richard M. Jones. Introduction by Lawrence S. Kubie [Publication Number 384, American Lecture Series. A Monograph in American lectures in Psychology, edited by Millie Harrower ]. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C Thomas, 1960, xi + 124 pp., $5.50.

The project described in this book, consisting of a piece of "action research" (K. Lewin) on ethnic prejudice, was conducted as a "self-knowledge" workshop at a traditional New England preparatory school, with two control groups, one from the same school, and the other from another of more liberal nature. The assumption that new mores are required for our schools, which, in the words of Lawrence Kubie's Introduction, "will enable young people from early years to understand and feel and put into words all the hidden things which go on in them, " but which "does not carry with it the right to act out … feelings blindly, " is an integral part of the pedagogic philosophy of the author of the book and his co-workers. The author, who is familiar with psychoanalytic theory and practice and thoroughly sympathetic to it, was aided by Kubie, Leo Berman, Elvin Semrad, and Gordon Allport. His experimental design is clear and detailed and reflects expert psychological and psychoanalytic knowledge. The basic attempt was to determine whether a workshop in self-knowledge would increase self-acceptance and result in a reduction in race prejudice. Although the author states that "The workshop worked no miracles … no neurotics were cured, nor was anyone's future happiness assured … no bigots were transformed, " there was "a measurably significant increase in attitudes of self-acceptance, " and there was, as an indirect effect, a reduction in race prejudice.

BASIC THEORY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS. By Robert Waelder. New York: International Universities Press, 1960, xiv + 273 pp., $5.00.

Unlike Rapaport's essay, The Structure of Psychoanalytic Theory [Psychological Issues, Vol. II, No. 2, Mon. No.