Psychoanalysis and the Occult: Edited by George Devereux, Ph.D. (New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1953. Pp. xv + 432.)

In this volume the editor has collected all the

psycho-analytic papers dealing with paranormal phenomena that are based on the clinical or personal experiences of psycho-analysts. (The recent paper by Branfman and Bunker was presumably published too late for inclusion.) To these he has added an historical review by Eisenbud and two essays by himself, one on 'Extrasensory Perception and Psycho-analytic Epistemology', the other on 'The Technique of Analyzing "Occult" Occurrences in Analysis'. In making such a rigidly clinical selection, one which has involved excluding a considerable number of contributions to psycho-analytic parapsychology, he has clearly been influenced by the nature of his own interest in the subject, which is restricted to the relevance of telepathic occurrences between patient and analyst to the problems of transference and counter-transference. Although this standpoint is in a way evasive, since the genuineness or otherwise of paranormal phenomena is a question of great general interest and one to which psycho-analysis might well be expected to make a valuable contribution, it has none the less the merit of providing a restricted and therefore manageable framework in which to consider a problem which is peculiarly apt to elude definition. It also incidentally provides the editor with the opportunity to perform the remarkable tour de force of discussing in some detail the technical problems raised by paranormal occurrences in analysis and the psychopathological motivations of both 'sender' and 'receiver' without committing himself to a definite opinion as to whether such phenomena ever actually occur.

This volume must then be considered primarily as a contribution to analytical theory and practice and as a record of the views and experiences of those analysts who have been sufficiently impressed by apparent telepathic occurrences during their clinical work to report them and to attempt to find some explanatory hypothesis. It also includes p