Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method, and Philosophy: A Symposium of the Second Annual New York University Institute of Philosophy, held in New York, March 28-29, 1958. Edited by Sidney Hook. New York: New York University Press, 1959. 370 pp.

The psychoanalytic practitioner may leave this book safely unread on the bookshelf; but the scientist who studies the basic principles of mental functioning and the method of their investigation will read it with benefit. He will soon realize that psychoanalysis and philosophy are still far apart, and that a long time of preparation is still needed before simple and relevant discussion may be started.

This is, perhaps, the first time in the United States that a group of distinguished psychoanalysts has met with a group of equally eminent philosophers in a critical interchange of views on the scientific status of psychoanalysis. The most calloused veteran of conventions has not witnessed anything of such outstanding quality combined with such great misunderstanding; such serious attempts to communicate combined with such painful ignorance; such unexpected clarification with such unnecessary defensiveness; such openmindedness with such dogmatic insistence among some of the participants.

Heinz Hartmann opens with a resumé of psychoanalysis and scientific method. He is followed by Ernest Nagel who concludes with the verdict 'not proven'. Lawrence Kubie presents the clearest exposé of methods, past, present, and future, starting with The Doctrine of Immaculate Perception. Abram Kardiner gives his point of view which is discussed by Ernest van den Haag in an essay, Psychoanalysis and Its Discontents. Morris Lazerowitz, Donald C. Williams, and Antony Flew focus on the more philosophical issues. Lazerowitz