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This ambitious volume describes the theories and experiences of Dr. Trigant Burrow and his associates of the Lifwynn Foundation. Originally
a psychoanalyst and president of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1926, Dr. Burrow broke away from psychoanalysis shortly after that date, espousing a system which he describes in this volume as 'Phyloanalysis'. He hopes to re-educate man in such a fashion that not only disease but social conflict can be eliminated. Essentially, he regards the 'symptoms of individual and society as but the outer aspect of impaired tensional processes that affect the balance of the organism's reaction as a whole'.
Because of the diffuse presentation and a very pronounced use of neologisms, some of them very confusing, the book is difficult for the psychiatrist to read and understand. For example, the term 'affect', in contrast to its customary use, is employed here to mean a reaction closely related to prejudice, and is regarded as pathologic. Allergy is defined as 'disturbances in man's interrelational functions'. The terms 'cotention, cotension, ditention and ditension, and "I" persona' are used constantly and are distinctly confusing. Some of the flavor of the book can be indicated by the fact that a human being is here generally called a 'hominid'. The value of this is very doubtful. In a book which tends to put forward a new hypothesis of human behavior, it is a distinct drawback, since its audience is necessarily severely limited.
Phyloanalysis is not easily summarized. It might be described analytically and rather roughly as an attempt to deal with human behavior, in group terms, and in terms of the superego and some ego functions, with rather complete elimination of the id and its strivings. Sexuality, particularly childhood sexuality, is for the most part ignored. The unconscious is hardly mentioned, except for one point at which he says, 'The moment is at hand for us to take conscious hold of our own unconscious pr