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If the Ladies Home Journal is in need of a Vienna correspondent we commend to them the author with this book as a 'reference'. What more suitable than that such a Journal—with its introduction to dainty homes, its cosy corners, its lingerie, its 'uplift', its voluptuous advertisements—should feature the pretty Science Talks of this 'Physician of the Soul'?
The style is almost unbearably fluent, and deep problems are approached with the urbanity that is more deadly than any of the other Disguises of Folly.
He who is self-dissatisfied can change himself into a new being. He has but to let himself be submerged in his own identity, to know himself, conquer himself, struggle with his defects, fortify his good qualities, render his vices impotent, and reinforce his virtues. But he must not run away from his own Ego, he must know himself, he must concentrate inwardly—but without losing touch with the return path to real life (p. 153).
Dr. Stekel should be an authority on the Ego (The Beloved Ego is one of his own productions) but he does not tell us how to avoid running away from it. Indeed he makes it rather a tempting object:
All celebrated philosophers, all prophets, all poets draw their inspiration from the unfathomable well of the soul, and it is they who teach us to lower our pitchers deep, that we may draw them forth filled with priceless treasures (p. 152).
But Dr. Stekel does not help us to do this and we are disappointed.
However the book carries a message, and a clear good message, to the hungry soul and to the family hearth, where it may safely be read: Things are not always what they seem. He leaves it at that.