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This volume attempts to satisfy an urgent current need, to describe the psychology of social movements. There is however little in the book that satisfies this need. What there is, is an extremely disjointed account of various aspects of individual psychology based largely on a static use of the libido theory, in which respect the author repeats many of the errors which have been made along these lines by many others.
The reasons for this failure are clear. The criteria for evaluating personality are extremely vague. Drives are chiefly used for this purpose, with the implicit assumption that drives can be examined in pure culture. Such loose use is made particularly of the concept of ego drives. A second failure is the absence of any conception of the influences that mold the ego into these attitudes which he is satisfied to call for instance, 'anal sadistic'. Despite much talk, nothing conclusive is derived from their use.
On the other hand the book is written in a pleasantly conversational tone and contains some excellent appraisals of the importance of psychology for sociological research. What mars the book is its technical failures and the substitution of scientific deductions by bromidic banalities. Here's one: 'Inner peace is, after all, the very beginning and end of the happy life' (p. 264). Another irritating quality of the book is that the author is constantly referring in the text to solutions of problems which are supposed to have been offered earlier in the work, solutions which apparently exist only in the author's mind. It is hardly a work for the ages.