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In this book (the fifth of the International Psycho-Analytical Library) Dr. Ernest Jones amply maintains his well-won reputation as the foremost English-speaking exponent of psycho-analysis. It is true that only one of the thirteen chapters of which the book consists is new in the sense of appearing in print for the first time. But the remaining twelve chapters, which originally constituted as many separate papers, were published in a variety of journals, by far the greater part in German, and even for those who have had ready access to the journals in question, the bringing together of these scattered papers (revised, and to a large extent rewritten, and provided with an index) will be a source of great convenience; while to the larger British and American public of those who are interested in psycho-analysis, but have no time or opportunity for consulting technical periodicals, the appearance of this book should constitute an event second only in importance to the translation of Freud's works and the publication of Dr. Jones's own previous Papers on Psycho-Analysis.
The thirteen incorporated papers deal with very varied fields, including history, theology, politics, folk-lore and artistic and literary creation. Three of the papers are long and detailed studies of about 100 pages each, constituting highly important contributions to the subjects to which they are devoted; the remainder are less ambitious in design and less elaborate in construction, but in every case highly stimulating and suggestive.
Of the three major studies, the first, 'A Psycho-Analytic Study of Hamlet', does not perhaps call for any special comment here, as it originally appeared in the American Journal of Psychology about fourteen years ago, and should therefore be familiar to most serious English-speaking students of the psychology of literature. It is also that one of the papers which, from the fact that it deals with a well-recognized and much-discussed literary problem, will probably be