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This solemnly sententious paper, full of platitudes, might just as well have been written in 1870 in so far as it betrays any knowledge of the fact that such an influence as that of Freud has changed the attitude of psychologists and the aspect of psychology.
The author accepts McDougall's much-disputed seven primary instincts. There is no mention made of a distinction between normal and morbid fear. 'Darkness, solitude, unexpected movement in objects,
sudden loud sounds, or unfamiliar experiences' are all lumped together as 'irrational' exciters of fear. Not a mention of Freud's mechanism of the breakdown of repression or of Watson's work with infants wherein he showed that there are a restricted number of stimuli that evoke fear in the new-born, and that darkness, solitude and unfamiliar experiences are not among these, but arouse only indifference or curiosity. They may do so later on in the child's life, but then they have been conditioned. One wonders if the children in California are biological sports in that Dr. Bridgeman does not report the presence of sex in their psychology.