Human Nature: A First Book in Psychology. By Max Schoen, Professor of Psychology, The Carnegie Institute of Technology. (New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers. 1930. Pp. 504. Price 9 s. net.)

This is an extremely naïve book, catholic and urbane in temper, but quite undiscriminating in judgement. Its main point of view is sensible enough. 'The Book has no axe to grind. It is neither structural nor behavioristic. It is both. It is built on the principle that life is an activity, and that mind and behavior are inseparable processes in the business of bringing about an adjustment between the organism and its environment' (p. xv).

A number of psycho-analytic notions are quaintly subsumed, here and there, under the general headings of academic structural psychology. In the chapter on 'Perception' (under the general heading of 'The Nature of Intelligence'), there is a section dealing with 'Abnormal Percepts'. These naturally include illusions and hallucinations, but carry us on without any theoretical transition, to delusions, and presently to obsessions, phobias and dreams, still under the same descriptive heading. There is a very brief account of the psycho-analytic view of dreams, with one longish illustration of dream interpretation, quoted from G. H. Green's Psycho-Analysis in the Class Room.

The readers of this JOURNAL will be interested in what the author has to say about phobias. This is the sum and total of his remarks upon the subject (pp. 275–276):

'A phobia is an abnormal fear. Some common phobias are:

• 1Acrophobia, fear of high places.

• 2Agoraphobia, fear of open places.

• 3Algophobia, fear of pain.

• 4Anthropophobia, fear of men or of some particular man.

• 5Astraphobia, fear of thunder or of other meteorological phenomena.