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In this book a professor of psychology has set out to give 'at least a tentative systematization of theoretical contributions and experimental research' in the field of the emotions. 'The author pretends to do no more than to pass judgment on what has been done' and wishes to co-ordinate his own studies (published) with other research. In so doing he hopes to 'lead others toward more intensive productivity in' the field. There is in this field, as the author points out, 'a wealth of data scattered over a large territory, and there is, on the other hand, an obscurity of focus which has led to a confusion of results'. If the author has fallen short of bringing about the systematization which is his aim, anyone familiar with his subject-matter will not hold this too much against him.
A further difficulty in both systematization and evaluation, however, would seem to lie in the author's lack of grasp of some of the important trends in medical psychology, and to a lesser extent physiology as well. Cannon and Crile are the only physicians whose work is cited with any great frequency, yet one needs to include more from the side of medicine if one is to encompass what is known of feeling and emotion. The author is puzzled by psycho-analysis—to judge from the concluding paragraph of his section on this subject. 'We might also question the assumption of subtlety on the part of so primitive and blind an entity as the id, or even the ego. The whole system, we recall, is a "feeling psychology". But the subterfuges that appear in hiding the real character of the libido are worthy of the astuteness and cleverness of a supreme order of intellect. How is it possible, then, to get the process of camouflaging started—a process that takes the acute mind and long practice of an analyst to