Phyloanalysis: By William Galt, M.A. With a preface by Trigant Burrow, M.D. (Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner & Co., Ltd., London. Pp. 161. Price 2 s. 6 d. net.)

Trigant Burrow explains in his introductory preface that no verbal description can give an adequate presentation of the disordered feeling processes whose existences are disclosed by this group method. The psycho-analyst can accept this statement from his own experience. But he cannot agree so readily to Burrow's further injunction 'don't think, do'. We want to think and to do.

Obviously the reviewer can deal only with the material Mr. Galt offers him in this little essay. Pages 115–138 represent the last ten minutes of a phyloanalytic group meeting composed of one demonstrator and ten students. The meeting appears to offer an excellent medium for the exposition of the hatred of all the members of the group to one another, and of the group in toto to the demonstrator who, in turn, is able to vent his aggression on the members under the guise of quoting Dr. Burrow 'who has spoken repeatedly of this quite artificial premise assumed by the "I"'. At other meetings there arose more intense forms of emotional disturbance. It is not clear whether love and hate are, in group meetings, permitted to manifest themselves in behaviour, or whether it is confined to words and vocal charges.

There is no lack in any society of manifestations of hate and love—any social function shews this, and there are usually amateur demonstrators enough to point this out; there is an abundance of teachers of ethics and religion who are not chary in their diatribes. From Galt's account it would not seem that the group meeting goes beyond this where everyone remains of the same opinion still, but we remember Burrow's injunction that no description adequately describes an emotional situation. The interpretations, as given, are confined to the superficial plane. Burrow seems to be of the opinion that in the analytic session there are only present the analyst and the patient; Olive Wendell Holmes long ago pointed out that in every talk between two persons there are at least six persons involve