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A book in which the writer would like to do justice to psycho-analysis. The chapter on the progress of psycho-therapeutic methods in gynæcology, which in a book of 205 pages is dealt with in fifteen pages, includes a short verbatim extract from Freud's article in the Handwörterbuch der Sexualwissenschaft on the place of psycho-analysis in medical practice. The author draws attention to the importance of psycho-analysis, and advises his readers
to have themselves analysed if they are intending to take up gynæcological psycho-therapy as genuine analysts. He believes, however, since he adheres to Kronfeld, that the fundamental ideas of the psycho-analytical doctrine can be utilized by 'undogmatic' physicians, i.e. by gynæcologists. Among these he understands a method of treatment which takes the form of an analysis and which he establishes on the patient's 'affective tie' to the physician. 'If this affective tie does not occur, then the analytical result proves ineffectual, and the effect of numberless sittings continued for years is at once void.' Apart from such misunderstandings, the attitude of the author to psycho-analysis is, in other respects, by far the most progressive to be found in any clinical treatise. This is notably the case in the chapter on the origin of gynæcological diseases like fluor, vaginismus, frigidity, menstrual disturbances, where he emphasizes the importance of the mind in organic and functional diseases. In the rest of the book, in his references, e.g. to the phylogenetic development of the mind, the instinctual development in women, and the mental results of the influences of their environment, the author draws mainly from the views of Adler, Kretschmer and Kronfeld.