Psychoanalysis as Science. The Hixon Lectures on the Scientific Status of Psychoanalysis: By Ernest R. Hilgard, Ph.D., Lawrence S. Kubie, M.D., and E. Pumpian-Mindlin, M.D. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1952. 174 pp.

Five lectures 'to acquaint an audience of scientists from other fields with the basic principles underlying, and the basic evidence for psychoanalytic concepts' were delivered in 1950 under the auspices of the Department of Biology of the California Institute of Technology. The lectures fulfil their purpose admirably, and should convince any impartially sceptical scientist that psychoanalysis is

indeed to be considered one of the scientific disciplines, as well as to inform him in a general way of its principles and methods. The psychoanalyst who is interested in the problems of psychoanalytic theory and methodology will find in this little volume a stimulating and provocative presentation of the several authors' conclusions and speculations on these subjects.

The author of the first two lectures, Dr. Hilgard, is now dean of the Graduate Division, Stanford University, and was formerly chairman of its Department of Psychology. He presents experimental studies on humans and animals which he feels in general confirm or illuminate psychoanalytic observations or theories (not always completely correctly understood) on psychodynamics and psychotherapy. To read these two lectures is to realize anew what a revolution has been caused by the impact of psychoanalysis in the field of academic psychology in the United States in the last twenty years.

Kubie, author of the third and fourth lectures, and Pumpian-Mindlin, author of the fifth and editor of the whole book, are both psychoanalysts. The former, after a reminder that there is little value in having research workers demonstrate in the laboratory what any trained and unbiased observer can see for himself in nature whenever he takes the trouble to look, goes on to a lengthy list of research studies which he feels are needed to revise our present crude and unproved theories regarding the healthy and neurotic functioning of the human mind. He makes it quite clear that he himself has no specific protocol to offer for suc