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Since no material alteration has been made in the body of this book, our careful and adequate review of the first edition (this JOURNAL, Vol. V., pp. 544–548) still applies.
In this edition, however, Dr. Hart has added a new chapter on 'The Conception of Dissociation', which was his Presidential Address to the medical Section of the British Psychological Society in 1926. This is written with the same clarity of thought which characterizes the author's previous work, but there is one item which demands criticism from our point of view. Dr. Hart again draws attention to Karl Pearson's three steps in the method of science, viz: (a) the observing and recording of phenomena, (b) the classification of the phenomena, and (c) the construction of formulæ or laws which will resume or explain the phenomena, with perhaps the construction of hypothetical entities conceived for such explanation. He considers that Janet's dissociation belongs to the second step, while Freud's unconscious belongs to the third step, because it is not a classification of observed phenomena, but a conceptual abstraction. Later Hart complains that the psycho-analytical school have written practically nothing about double personality; but the reason for this is just that they have not had the opportunity of making observations on this class of patient by the psycho-analytical method. Psycho-analysis is a method of observation in the first instance, the observations have been classified, and it is incorrect to state that its laws have been 'constructed' by Freud or anybody else. It is the classification that has taught us certain psychological laws. As to the unconscious being a concept, those among us who practise psycho-analysis do not conceive it, but observe it every day of our lives.