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The contents of this book may be guessed from the title. The author develops in eight chapters the following eight these: (1) That reformism is a reaction to life determined by the psychological condition of the reformer, and is not primarily determined by any peculiar social order or condition. (2) That the reformer is an hysteriac (sic) and that his social activities are the result of his abnormal condition. (3) That libertinism and reformism can not be understood as cause and effect or in any proper sense as reactions to each other; that both have the same genesis and a simultaneous development. (4) That the reformer's hysteria results from an inhibition of normal sexual life and is a form of sexual perversion. (5) That prohibition is not essentially different from other reformist activities: that it is the result of sexual perversion and is a sadistic gratification of the sexual desire. (6) That the drinking of alcoholic beverages has a peculiar sexual significance and a necessary and important part in the healthy sex life of humanity. (7) That reformism leads to race suicide through inversion of the sexes and a development of the female sex element at the expense of the male and by a weakening and ultimate suppression of the male element in the social dynamic. (8) That the cure for reform hysteria is the psychoanalysis of reformers and the application of psycho-analytic principles in social hygiene.
As may be guessed, the book is a general polemic rather than a dispassionate scientific study and is written with an affect-tone. At the same time a great part of what the author has to say is doubtless true and will perhaps be taken into account by statesmen of a future generation.