Set the Children Free: By Fritz Wittels. Translated from the revised fourth German Edition by Eden and Cedar Paul. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1933. 242 p.

This English version of Dr. Wittel's work, which in the German original appears under the more sober title, Die Befreiung des Kindes, treats of the psychological care of children from the standpoint of a psychoanalyst. It is dramatically and forcefully written in an engaging style, for example, "A child's triumph is complete when grown-ups honor it by losing their tempers with it." "Love brings sunshine into everything in this vale of tears, and so, too, did it ameliorate the lot of past generations of children."

The author's presentation in the earlier chapters of the book of "The Impulses of the Child" and "The Child's Ego" offers the reader not versed in psychoanalysis an authoritative psychoanalytic statement of the psychological development of the young child. Material difficult for a lay reader is presented skilfully and in conversational and non-technical terms, with abundant use of illustrations. The second chapter, "Thought among Primitives", however, presents some points of view possibly more acceptable to Continental than to American anthropologists. Such statements as "… the adult savage remains a child his whole life long", and, "Even if a savage is brought up in a civilized community from the moment he sees the light, he remains different from other children," would be disavowed by first hand students of primitive cultures, and require many qualifications.