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This book is a classic of sense-organ psychology. Although technical, it is written so simply and arrestingly that it holds the reader's interest throughout. It is a beautifully condensed summary of the present status of the scientific knowledge of the subject. As Boring points out in the introduction, this status contrasts with the little that was known when a similar summary was made 75 years ago by Helmholtz. Scientific knowledge of hearing has been revolutionized in the last decade by the development of the radio tube which has made possible high degrees of electrical amplification and thereby a direct study of the minute but significant electrical effects involved. These effects give clues to the basic mechanisms. Electrical amplification has done for neurophysiology what the psychoanalytic technique has done for psychology.
The book is concerned with correlations between the physics of sound, the mechanisms of the middle and inner ears, the neurophysiology of the auditory pathways, and the individual's subjective sensory discrimination. Thus, several discriminatory reactions which we perceive as pitch, loudness, volume and density, are based upon different combinations of two and only two aspects of a tonal stimulus, namely, frequency and intensity. The book does not deal with sound as a purveyor of thought, for it is concerned with an organ and a mechanism rather than with the psychology of the individual as a whole. It is therefore not of direct interest to the psychoanalyst. It is, however, valuable to anyone interested in psychosomatic problems because it approaches the problem of the