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From the first page where is written, 'What we mean by hostility is—the tendency of an organism to do something harmful to another organism', to the last page which states, 'Hostility should be made universally known for what it is, a neurotic symptom, a symptom of weakness and frustration, a primitive method of defense which has become mankind's principal enemy', this book is striking for its lucidity. There is no ambiguity in any of the short sentences that are linked each to the next in an orderly development of ideas. The clinical examples with which the exposition is interspersed are illuminating.
Clearly, hostility is delineated as a social force, as a biological by-product, and as a response to the early conditioning of the individual. Seven mechanisms are shown by which this emotion is handled, as well as the role it plays in politics, and its relation to religion and to happiness. The final chapters contain encouraging suggestions of how the wisdom and knowledge presented here can be put into practice for the benefit of mankind in general.
In fact, this book well exemplifies how psychoanalytic concepts can be applied and used by intelligent laymen of goodwill, even though they have not themselves been analyzed. The usefulness of the ideas set forth here for mental hygiene can hardly be overestimated.
In such a volume, consideration of the theoretical dynamics of hostility which now exercises the minds of many leading analysts would be out of place. The subtlety and complexity of theories, as yet only tentatively formulated, would blur the clearness and shake the sureness with which analytic concepts must be offered to the general reader. The analytic student should, therefore, not be disappointed, though well he may be, at finding that lucidity is not always accompanied by depth.