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For some time it has seemed to the reviewer that nothing might prove more helpful to the progress of psychoanalytic technique
and theory than a thorough understanding of the phenomena of the conditioned reflex and of hypnotism. In Frolov's volume there is a wealth of suggestive information and data.
In one short volume the author has attempted to present a picture of Pavlov the man, Pavlov the working machine of gigantic proportions, a résumé of the scientific background out of which his work arose, of the evolution of his experimental procedures and theories, an analysis of the impact of his work on physiology, neurology, and psychiatry, of its implications to philosophy, and finally of Pavlov's place in the social and economic world of Soviet Russia. In so short a book it is impossible for the author to fulfil this ambitious plan in more than a sketchy fashion.
The book is written with a reverence which finally becomes contageous, even though occasionally it is perhaps somewhat blindly and naïvely eulogistic. For instance, it is evident that Pavlov lived and worked with an obsessional meticulousness and precision, which at times took rather amusing forms, such as his riding to town daily with a stop watch in his hand. The author speaks of this reverently as Pavlov's 'strictly defined coördinates in time and space … strictly adhered to' (pp. 268-269). However, these occasional expressions of blind adulation are compensated by vivid vignettes of the simple scientist at work in his laboratory (pp. 60-62), and by the picture in Chapter VIII of indomitable courage in the pursuit of his studies through the most trying periods of the revolution.
The book is somewhat too condensed for the layman, whereas for the technically interested reader clearer and more detailed expositions are already available; nevertheless as a running story of the evolution of Pavlovian theory it is exceedingly interesting. Of profound importance to the psychiatrist and analyst, in Chapters