Psychology and Psychotherapy: By William Brown, M.A., M.D., D.Sc. With a Foreword by William Aldren Turner, C.B., M.D. (Arnold, London, 1921. Pp. 196. Price 8s. 6d.)

Dr. Brown has given us a very readable little volume, and what he has to say is attractively and clearly presented. It would be good if more of the books written on cognate topics were written with the same conciseness, neatness and clarity.

The contents of the book, however, are of more unequal value, though the author has, with one important exception, successfully achieved his main purpose of expounding the psychological principles underlying the practice of psychotherapy. Of the five sections the first, "Introductory", gives a general account of mental dissociation, hypnotism, and of hysteria and other neuroses, with a thumb-nail sketch of Freud's and Jung's views of sex. The description of neurasthenia (p. 34) makes it plain that the author really has the condition of hypochondria in mind. He says that Freud's three objections to the method of hypnotism are: (1) Failure of the method in certain cases. (2) Its tendency to produce other symptoms in place of those of which the patient is cured. (3) Fear of the transference of sexual feeling to the person of the physician (p. 16). The last of these is, of course, a grotesque invention. In the second he ascribes to Freud the belief that hypnotism produces the other symptoms, whereas Freud naturally is speaking of the neurosis. Freud's real objection is not included in the list, though it is hinted at elsewhere in the book in a misleading statement. One notes, by the way, that, whenever the subject of transference and its relation to suggestion is touched on, signs of confusion of thought appear. Thus the author proclaims with the air of discovery, and insists in the face of imaginary opposition, that transference occurs during psycho-analysis! "I am not claiming that analysis involves suggestion … But I am contending that the method of psycho-analysis, even when carried out according to the strictest rules of the Freudian school, does involve suggestion in the form of transference,