The Impulse to Dominate: By D. W. Harding. (George Allen and Unwin, London, 1942. Pp. 256. Price, 7 s. 6 d.)

This is on the whole a disappointing book. The first third of it, describing with much caustic shrewdness the relationship of our social institutions to war, gives an impression of penetration and raises expectations that when the author comes to his subject proper he will have something illuminating to say about it. Such hopes are not borne out by the rest of the book, for the author proffers no serious investigation of the impulse to dominate which is his avowed theme. And the reason for this is plain. The author is concerned essentially with the sociological aspects of psychology and shows little interest in any psychological or biological analysis of the sources of impulses. His attitude to psycho-analysis is polite, but characteristically off-hand. He refers to the psycho-analytical findings of the unconscious factors in relation to war as the 'neurotic' factors, thus revealing the popular view that the unconscious mind is a sporadic, neurotic and abnormal phenomenon which a 'normal' outlook need take little into account.

The rest of the book rather degenerates into a plea that the impulse to dominate need not be. The author tends to regard it as mainly an artificial social phenomenon fostered by particular types of culture, here coming close, though on a broader front, to Perry's well-known view. Attitudes