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It seems superfluous to say that the least we are entitled to demand of one who understakes the difficult and not altogether grateful task
of providing the laity with an exposition of the theory and practice of modern psychiatry is that he shall show a reasonable grasp of its fundamental postulates and a fair degree of insight into the problems involved. But it must be said that in respect of these minimum requirements the author of the present diffuse and repetitious volume is lamentably deficient.
It is a matter of rejoicing, it is true, that a surgeon should manifest an acute awareness of, and a sincere effort to cope with, the emotional problems of his patients—so different is this from the attitude of many of his confreres. But it is an ill thing that this laudability of intent and enthusiasm of purpose should crystallize in a work in which numerous entirely sound and sensible remarks are rather more than counterbalanced by several hundred pages of what, more often than not, can only be described as claptrap. Lest the reviewer seem self-convicted of prejudice, however, it may be that samples of Dr. Sadler's actual pronouncements will plead like angels trumpet-tongued, as compared with anything the reviewer could say in characterization.
Although Freud harbors various serious misconceptions, it is nevertheless true that in a little more than five hundred out of the one thousand patients who have had an "emotional analysis" by Dr. Sadler, "it was the sex complex that was the offending cause"; and this is why it is that "the Freudians have succeeded more or less, even though operating on a somewhat erroneous hypothesis". Freud is misled in supposing that "it is always the objectionable, the undesirable, the unworthy thought or emotion that is suppressed"; for "I find that individuals are given to suppressing either the good or the bad, the desirable or the undesirable, according to circumstances", as for example when an individual "suppresses his religious con