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This is rather a difficult book to review, as it appeals both to one's critical sense and to one's sympathies. The first chapters one is especially disposed to be critical about. The arrangement and the language all belong to the old faculty psychology. The will, the intellect and all the rest of it seem to be in full static control, and when one in addition learns that the author has leanings towards telepathy (p. 70), and the principles of treatment which we have learned to associate with Christian Science (p. 127), and speaks sympathetically of the learning of the Yogis (p. 103) then we are sure that the book can have little virtue. Despite all this, however, in the latter part of the work the author gains our attention and interest. Both the chapters on emotion and sex have distinct merit. She knows something of the Freudian psychology, of the principles of conflict and repression, and discusses both of these subjects largely from this point of view. That she has only plumbed the shallow places of psychoanalysis, however, is demonstrated when she comes to speak of the form of treatment to be applied to a person who feels that they are so suggestible that they may go into a store and buy anything that the salesman proffers, this treatment consisting in saying to the patient “you will never be persuaded to buy anything that you do not want—you will always know your own mind—you are perfectly sure of yourself” (p. 47); her belief in the exchange of magnetism or bodily vibrations (p. 307); her use of such terms as “complete insanity” (261), and the like.
The book as a whole belongs to a large group of works that are being written to emphasize the importance of the psyche. That we do not agree with specific features in the presentation should not blind us to the fact that the work is representative of a movement which should have our sympathetic and intelligent assistance. When in addition to this we find that the authoress has come in touch with psychoanalysis, has a