The Commonsense of Dreams: By Henry J. Watt, D.Phil. (International University Series in Psychology. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1929. Pp. 212. Price 13 s. 6 d.)

The author of this book was a brilliant experimental psychologist whose death at the untimely age of forty-six has been widely deplored. The book is prefaced by a sympathetic history of his life, written by Shepherd Dawson, together with the bibliography of his published works.

The present volume is published four years after Professor Watt's death, and we are afraid it will not have the effect of heightening his reputation. Essentially it consists, as the very title suggests, in the familiar attempt to explain away the interest taken by psycho-analysis in the study of dreams, the object being to discount the significance of any discoveries purported to have been made by this method. This remark is substantiated by the following quotations: 'This book shows that dreams are related to the preceding work of the waking mind in a generally simple way and it maintains that no new psychology at all is required to bring the fruits of psycho-analysis under the scope of the old theory of association, so potent in British mental philosophy of past centuries, if only we extend the accepted data of the mind to include not only sensations and ideas, but also attitudes and urges. By this I do