'What Man has Made of Man'

Mortimer J. Adler1 is an eager and intense thinker. He is imbued with the spirit of tradition, yet he is keen, dynamic. As a philosopher he tries not to overlook the most important problems which life of today imposes upon man and he could not overlook the influence which psychoanalysis has been exerting on our attitudes towards life and on our thinking for almost a generation.

Invited to state his views on psychoanalysis, Adler presented a course of four lectures at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. What Man Has Made of Man is this course in book form. It is not a book in the strict sense of the word but rather a collection of voluminous notes from which the lectures were given, plus additional notes. It is difficult to imagine that Professor Adler's lectures were given textually as the notes are written; they undoubtedly were more spontaneous and woven together into a more sequential whole, whereas the book presents one hundred and twenty-three pages of notes and one hundred and twenty-one pages of extensive footnotes—all of which make it difficult reading matter. The thoughts of the author are rich and deep but as presented they are too schematic, too dogmatic, too scattered and therefore confusing at times when they should not be. Adler's thoughts are not confusing but they are couched in a form that is foreign to the reader of today.

The form belongs to a specific past: to that time when