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By William S. Sadler, M.D., and Lena K. Sadler, M.D. New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1940. 350 pp.
AS THE TWIG IS BENT. By Leslie B. Hohman, M.D. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1940. 291 pp.
The dilemma of those who resist basic psychoanalytic principles and yet must incorporate into their thinking certain psychoanalytic concepts that have today become common property is illustrated in these two books. Inevitable misunderstanding of freudian ideas and conscious hostility and unconscious resistance to basic concepts make for a variety of inconsistencies in explaining behavior and suggesting treatment or training. Blind spots prevent clarifying situations on deeper levels in Hohman's book. Ambivalence mars the usefulness of progressive attitudes in the Sadlers' book.
The latter offers to parents a comprehensive guide to the psychologic aspects of early childhood problems, presenting modern attitudes on such matters as training for bowel and bladder control, thumb-sucking, fears of childhood, and all the usual problems of discipline and the relationships of parent and child. Where it is a useful book is in its concrete instructions and specific advice of a medical or pedagogic nature in certain typical difficult situations. Where it is weak from the psychoanalytic point of view, is in its detachment of one behavior phenomenon from another, a fault that follows inevitably from refusal to recognize the instincts