Anxiety and Magic Thinking: By Charles Odier, M.D. Translated by Marie-Louise Schoelly, M.D., and Mary Jane Sherfey, M.D. (New York: International Universities Press.)

The author states that his aim is to harmonize the psycho-analytic concepts of Freud with the psycho-genetic ideas of Piaget. He states that these two approaches are complementary and not incompatible and that much is to be gained from

a more widespread recognition of that fact. Whereas psycho-analysis concerns itself with the formation of the unconscious mind, genetic psychology is concerned with the realization of the self, in other words the ego. This description may be true of Piaget's psychology, but I do not think that psycho-analysis excludes the ego. On the contrary it becomes more concerned each year with ego-development and character disturbances due to the various distortions of the ego. It seems to be apparent that Piaget's seven difficult stages of development, clearly ego-development, consist of the gradual differentiation and elaboration of the secondary process. Prelogical or magical thinking, however, is the modus operandi of the primary process, of the young child, of regression, and of the psychoses. It is under the stress of overwhelming anxiety that certain neurotically predisposed persons regress, develop symptoms and syndromes, the various symbols of which indicate a falling back upon prelogical thought which consists very largely of magical conceptual images. Also, ontogenetically speaking, with the reactivation of such magical thought processes the malevolent and benevolent images which inhabit the child mind are reactivated also. They are then projected into the environment so that the attackers appear to have an external origin. The section on phobias is informative and in it the rôle of anxiety and magical thinking is delineated.

In the section on the ego and prelogical regression in neuroses, some interesting clinical material is discussed. Some of this could be interpreted quite differently from the way in which the author interprets it, but this of course is true of a great deal of clinical material in general. An example