Behaviourism: A Symposium by Josiah Morse, William McDougall, Charles C. Josey, W. E. Garrison, Ross L. Finney, Julius Mark, Rufus M. Jones, F. J. McConnell. Edited by William P. King. (London: Student Christian Movement Press, 1931. Pp. 160. Price 5 s.)

This is a symposium upon Behaviourism by a number of American writers, approaching the problem chiefly from a religious or philosophical standpoint. Examples of the questions they raise are: 'Behaviourism's Silence as to Human Values', 'Behaviourism and Religion', 'Behaviourism and Freedom', 'Have Souls Gone Out of Fashion?', and so on.

The chief interest of the book, however, is a contribution by McDougall on 'The Psychology They Teach in New York'. This is a first-rate piece of controversial writing, with a most trenchant analysis and criticism of the assumptions of Watsonian Behaviourism. He shows that it stands upon a tripod support, each leg of which is dubious and shaky in the extreme: namely, (1) Watson's denial of instinct, on the basis of a few negative observations of young infants; (2) an unwarranted leap from the simple conditioned reflex, built up gradually by many repetitions, to intelligent adaptation on the basis of a sudden flash of insight, which, once achieved, is likely to be repeated indefinitely under a widely varying range of similar circumstances and with wide differences of means employed; (3) Thorndike's theory that intelligent adaptation is a perfectly random process. A host of studies of animal behaviour, including those of Yerkes, Köhler, D. K. Adams, and K. S. Lashley, have given the coup de grâce to this mechanical view of learning.

McDougall lays a great deal of responsibility for the enormous popularity of crude behaviourism in America at the door of the psychologists of