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Dr. Brown is becoming an author of small octavo volumes. This is a matter for regret, his position in English psychology demands that his contributions to current literature should be more substantial and that they should encounter the problems in closer engagement than is possible in general essays. Further to devote 40 pages to 'The Philosophical Background' in a short book on Suggestion and Mental Analysis suggests a flight into ambiguity ('But the ultimate solution can only come from Metaphysics', p. 165) which does not encourage us to believe that he puts much faith in observation.
Neurasthenia, which is classed with the psychoneuroses, is amenable to 'autognostic working over of past experiences', its aetiology is obscure.
If we fall in love we experience certain sentimental feelings in regard to a certain person, and we extend this feeling in some degree to a great many things connected with him. If we afterwards fall out of love again, these sentimental feelings will continue to be connected in our mind with certain experiences, and this association only dies out very gradually. In these cases of neurasthenia too much emotion has been linked up with certain experiences, too little with other experiences. This has tended to produce conflict, strain. The more this has happened the more a person is repressed and unnatural, or mentally awkward. (p. 71).
It will surprise many neurasthenics to see no mention of the relation of their trouble to masturbation, but this is, perhaps, only another example of the author's ambiguity.
He alludes to Freud's 'very interesting theory as regards compulsion neurosis' (p. 76), but adds,
one is certainly tempted to believe that a very important factor in compulsion neurosis is great exaggeration of the innate tendency towards