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This is a book worth reading, and it fills to some extent a long-felt want in specifically sexuological literature. Up till now official sexuology has made very little use of the results of psycho-analytical research; this book may be said to be written under the ægis of Freud. The Freudian libido-theory, in particular that side of it which deals with the infantile sexual development, with the erotogenic zones and even with the 'polymorphously perverse' character of the child, is for the most part accepted and applied with understanding in the discussion of pathological sexual phenomena. One has the impression that the author has digested the psycho-analytical doctrine, and yet frequently, even in passages in which the essential fundamental propositions of psycho-analysis have been practically accepted, he speaks of the 'schematically generalized and dogmatically petrified character' of the theory as represented by the Freudian school.
His repudiation of the psycho-analytical view that psychogenetically the sexual conflict plays its part in every neurosis, whilst other conflicts may or may not be present, leads him to postulate a special group of 'sexual neuroses', to which he devotes a whole chapter. It is true that under this heading is included almost every form of neurotic disease: hysteria, anxiety-neurosis, obsessional neurosis, neurasthenia and so forth. The author does not even give examples of non-sexual neuroses. His ambivalent attitude to this psycho-analytical view is best illustrated by the following remarks (p. 85): All the symptoms of the obsessional neurosis indicate 'a specially typical and strong psychogenetic interweaving of obsessional formations with sexual repressions'. 'I must of course emphasize the fact that in stating this I do not mean to assert that the connection is a fundamental one' … 'nevertheless the obsessional symptoms taken as a whole do indicate a special relation to sexuality, no matter what the nature of this relation m