A Psychoanalytic Model of Attention and Learning [psychological Issues, Monograph 23]: By Fred Schwartz and Peter H. Schiller. New York: International Universities Press, 1970, 134 pp., $7.50.

With the publication of this volume, a historical task has been completed. David Rapaport, in a series of brilliant essays, attempted to cull a systematic theory of cognition from the existing psychoanalytic literature. This effort was part of a mission to make psychoanalysis a general psychology or, perhaps more precisely, to bring together the dual streams of clinical and experimental investigation under a central umbrella of theory. He had hoped to organize a series of postulates into a model of the mind and then test this model by experimentation. The "final model" would then be a product both of clinical studies through the psychoanalytic method of treatment and exploration, and experimental studies using the precision of design, statistical analysis, and controlled variation possible only in the laboratory. Fred Schwartz and Peter Schiller worked further on his basic postulates concerning consciousness, attention, and learning. They evolved designs amenable to laboratory study, and they conducted experiments. This monograph reports their results and their re-evaluation of the basic postulates.

When academic psychology was formalized as a discipline during the nineteenth century, the study of thought processes was a natural topic and the center of considerable interest. This early interest seemed to diverge into two streams. One could be called "medical psychology," the other "formal psychology."