Studies in the Psychology of Art, Vol. II: Edited by Norman C. Meier. University of Iowa Studies in Psychology. Psychological Monographs. Psychological Review Publications, Vol. XLVIII, No. 1, 1936. 172 pp.

These studies are on the whole very technical in nature and of interest primarily to the psychologist concerned with the application of tests for school children and art teachers interested in approximations of artistic abilities, appreciative and creative. The aim is summed up by the editor of the special studies: 'The research program was projected as a series of investigations, each contributing some advance toward one of the following problems: the nature and variation in the general population of artistic capacity and art ability (productivity); the conditions and limitations of learning in art education during the grade school and high school periods; the nature of the appreciation process and conditions affecting its functioning; and new approaches to the study of the creative mind.'

The papers, unless one is interested in the particular pedagogical problems involved, are dry and uninteresting. The point of view taken is academic in both the psychological and artistic senses. However, one could have no quarrel with this if it were not that in the preface a much more ambitious claim is made for these and other studies in the series. Here we read that 'the attitude of these published researches is not to wipe away æsthetic appreciation and artistic creation but to understand them better from the scientific angle and to learn their intricacies within the limits of scientific possibility'.

Any comprehensive and penetrating investigation of human behavior should take into consideration unconscious motives. These are particularly important in art which is frequently the product of sublimated infantile strivings and conflict. If the scientific investigation of a field is the aim, one must not be too concerned that the object of study will lose its intrinsic worth through such scrutiny. The product of good artistic creation actually stands on its own merits and will not be destroyed by uncovering the underlying unconscious motivation any more than the apprecia