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A work which is designed to make known the results of analytical research to a circle of readers who have had no training in analysis, always run the risk, either of compromising too much with the usual resistances and thereby watering down the scientific conclusions, or else of immediately expecting too much from the readers and thereby repelling them. In the papers which form this volume both dangers have been avoided with much tact and skill. To those interested in psycho-analysis from the educational point of view the book makes known what analysis has discovered about the child's development and the difficulties which this encounters and indicates the possible line of attack for educational workers. But this is not all; the numerous clear examples give a vivid picture of the instinctual life of the child. We should hardly have expected anything else from the author, for Frau Dr. Hug-Hellmuth was the first to explore in practice the field of analysis of children, and she has accumulated by far the widest experience in this branch of work.
There are many points which might be criticized, and yet such criticism would seem more or less arbitrary, for a work of so popular a character does by its very nature necessitate a selection amongst possible trains of thought, and this choice must within fairly wide limits depend on the author's personal estimate of its importance. Thus, for example, in her account of troubles in connection with eating, I note that she omits to refer to the theory of oral sexuality, and again, in speaking of the insatiable craving of some children for love, she does not point out that this craving is based on feelings of guilt on account of the subject's own repressed hate-tendencies. It seems to me, too, that the cardinal importance of the Oedipus complex in its central significance might have been even more strongly brought out. Finally, in some of the examples, otherwise so instructive, one has here and there the feeling that to reade