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The somewhat comprehensive and challenging title of this volume is apt to excite expectations which, in the cases of readers versed in psycho-analytical contributions to Characterology, are far from being fulfilled. Here will be found an erudite and detailed discussion of character manifestations, from the descriptive and classificatory standpoint, which is still the main preoccupation of most general psychologists, and from this point of view Mr. Shand's treatise has a generally recognised importance; but its value as a current contribution to characterological research is impaired, not only by his adherence to this older point of view, but even more by his failure to take into account, or even acknowledge, the existence of those far-reaching contributions to characterology, which are perhaps the most striking results of psycho-analytical investigation.
Nowhere in these pages is the name of Freud mentioned, and this omission is rendered even more pointed by citations from psycho-pathologists like Kraepelin who have made no important contributions to characterology, yet are quoted curiously enough apropos of the relationship between sorrow and melancholy, which is the theme of one of Freud's most penetrating researches into the structure of the Ego.
Mr. Shand's orientation in the genetic aspects of his subject is revealed by the following admission (p. 128): 'We vaguely surmise that our character developes as we grow up, and that at a certain age it is set and its chief characteristics defined'. There is surely no longer any need for such vagueness in a modern treatise on character: it has long since been replaced elsewhere by a definite collection of data.
Mr. Shand's 'Law of organisation', which he elaborates into an ascending scale of superimposed 'systems' of impulses, emotions and sentiments, really refers to the vicissitudes of Ego-development; but we miss any reference to the dynamics of conflict, the processes of repression and sublimatory displacement, the