The Case of Mrs. A. (The Diagnosis of a Life-Style): By Alfred Adler. (C. W. Daniel Company, 1931. Individual Psychology Publications: Medical Pamphlets, No. 1. Pp. 48. Price 2 s.)

In this little book Adler deals with a case history in the manner of a schoolboy's 'unseen'; reading sentence by sentence and giving a free translation in terms of individual psychology, which, according to the Editor's introduction, can be equated with common sense. Mrs. A. is a married woman of thirty-one and has come for psychotherapeutic treatment, so 'there could be a problem of marriage, of children, perhaps also a problem of income in these times'. And so it goes on: rather obvious guesses of sufficiently wide scope and general nature to give a high probability of being borne out. But for this kind of common sense why bother with the resounding title of Individual Psychology!

Where this work varies from the examinee's 'unseen' is that there is no examiner to check its correctness; and its accuracy comes seriously into question when we find the reality of guilt being brushed aside for the sake of the Will to Power. According to Adler, guilt and repentance are not real, they are artifices for the gaining of power. In the absence of any other examiner, must we not turn to the psychopath himself, who finds the feeling of guilt to be very real and very difficult to deal with?