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Havelock Ellis, endowed with both the imagination of the artist and of the scientist, the pioneer of the scientific study of sexual psychology in this country, has by this valuable manual added to the debt all medical practitioners and students owe to him.
He has here bountifully given in the results of his great experience the theories of sexual psychology in its varied manifestations as well as a
practical guide of great value to the present generation of physicians. The author notices in his preface that the vacuum which existed in his student days still persists—no instruction is to-day given to medical students in the psycho-physical processes of sex, possibly because at the medical schools there is no one effectively able to give it. One of the results is that the intelligent layman is often more informed than the doctor whom he consults; the former recognizes there is a problem, the latter may wish to deny that there is a problem at all. For instance, adolescents sometimes seek advice about masturbation, as do parents on behalf of their young children, too frequently to be put off with a homily or with the schoolmaster's counsel of games and cold water. Those who read their Havelock Ellis will have definite material upon which to base their advice. They will recognize masturbation in childhood as a part of sexual development and will be able to differentiate between this ordinary manifestation and obsessive masturbation in children and adolescents. It would seem that Havelock Ellis recognizes that the feeling of guilt about masturbation in children as well as in their parents and their doctors is due to unconscious attempts to overcome the aggressive impulses rather than to repression of the libidinal desires. He concludes that 'in the case of moderate masturbation in healthy, well-born individuals, no seriously pernicious results necessarily follow'. He would indeed probably agree that harm is done by attempts to stop the ordinary masturbation of chi