Comparative ethology is a branch of psychology which in the United States is more honored in the breach than in the observance. The monopoly of the white rat in psychology is hardly broken yet, rare instances like Liddell and Yerkes to the contrary. Konrad Lorenz's book, though written for popular consumption, is a welcome reminder that a whole school of research in England, Holland, Switzerland and particularly Austria is devoted to the field study of animal mores in which discoveries have been made that I believe to be of fundamental importance from the point of view of psychoanalytic theory.

Psychoanalysts on the whole are not much interested in animal psychology. Since the publication of Schjelderup-Ebbe's article on the hacking reflex of the chicken, only scattered articles have appeared in our literature. Yet no more convincing data on the functioning of instincts, of the reality principle, on the development of the thinking process can be found than certain observations of Koehler and of Lorenz. In my belief Lorenz's first book, Der