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In an accompanying pamphlet the publishers state that 'The body of
theory that centres round the names of Dr. Freud and Dr. Jung has been interpreted of recent years with a degree of hysterical partisanship that has tended to alienate the very people whom it should interest. Miss Coster's object throughout has been to maintain an attitude of sane common sense and to examine patiently and fairly the central theme of Psycho-analysis'. How many readers of this statement would suspect that the two modes of exposition referred to differ merely in that one is based on knowledge and investigation of the subject whereas the other dispenses with any such formality? When we ask that qualification Miss Coster has for expounding this abstruse subject we are astonished to read in the preface an expression of her grateful acknowledgements to Dr. Good, of Littlemore Asylum, 'to whose patient and generous teaching I owe such understanding as I possess of the theory and practice of psycho-analysis'. It may be said at once that the expectations thus aroused are fully confirmed on reading the book.
The author begins with a repudiation of the idea that psycho-analysis is confined to the method introduced by Freud. No such distinction is permissible, in her opinion, between all the various schools of thought who choose to appropriate the term psycho-analysis, 'for Freud's term was in general use to designate all schools of the subject long before the effort to restrict it had been made'. This is an extremely misleading way of saying that Freud's term referred to psycho-analysis alone before other schools existed to exploit it.
The book needs no detailed criticism here, for the simple reason that it deals hardly at all with the subject of psycho-analysis. Actually it consists of a very superficial talk on various psychological topics, such as fear, the 'power instinct', sexual enlightenment, and so on. The word 'unconscious' is mentioned now and then, but obviously there is no ap