Man Into Wolf: An Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism and Lycanthropy: By Robert Eisler. With an Introduction by Prof. Sir David K. Henderson. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1951. Pp. 286. 21 s.)

The form of this book is somewhat unusual. It consists essentially of a 29-page lecture given to the psychiatric section of the Royal Society of Medicine under the presidency of Sir D. K. Henderson (who writes the Introduction), the author's foreword, and two hundred pages of notes, five appendices, and an index. The subject-matter was originally published in the Hibbert Journal for 1946 as one of the initial chapters of a Sociology of war and peace, but the author's untimely death in 1949 prevented him from completing this work.

The author's foreword is a valuable contribution, as in it he outlines the theme of his paper and conclusively defends its somewhat unorthodox presentation in the book. He declares that in presenting a thesis the lecturer should be able to answer all questions and counter all objections raised in the subsequent discussion. This he claims to have done by including in the book so many notes and references. It is obvious from Sir D. K. Henderson's introduction that the lecture was clear and interesting, but perhaps for the reader the subject-matter would have been more coherently presented if the lecture had been recast and more of the supporting evidence now given in the form of notes incorporated in the text. It is clear that the author spent an immense amount of time and thought on both the lecture itself and its supporting notes.

In his approach to the understanding of sadism and masochism he introduces the paradox of the widespread desire to suffer pain, and uses this to show how ridiculous is the hedonistic theory of motivation. He ignores any ontogenetic causes and explains irrational behaviour in terms of atavistic reversion. He proceeds to unfold his concept of the evolution of the human race from the time of the ice age, when the ancestors of the golden age—the Primate apes—were perfectly innocuous, frugivorous savages, living in the