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To those who are familiar with this wartime book only through Freud's complimentary as well as critical references to it in his Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, it may seem surprising that it should now merit republication in even fuller form than when it originally appeared. In 1917 (a year after publication) and before America's entry into the war, it was given a long and favourable notice by Dr. William A. White in the Psycho-analytic Review. For a proper appreciation of the scientific value of this book, we, too, should adopt his neutral attitude to its avowed albeit secondary aim of explaining the warmongering character of the German nation. What remains is a storehouse of brilliant and stimulating inferences, leading to curiously faulty conclusions. For instance, Trotter's postulation of a 'gregarious instinct' may be quite wrong, but his working through of its modes of operation is descriptive of much that still awaits clarification in our theory in regard to the ego-ideal and the superego. When one combines this subject-matter with his plea that the otherwise much praised new discipline of psycho-analysis gives too little due to the repressing forces which successfully vanquish unwelcome instincts, he provides a remarkable forecast of the redresses still being made in metapsychology.
That this book on sociology, written by a distinguished surgeon for the lay public, should still call for republication is the most practical proof of its intrinsic value.