You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
One of the most interesting of the books, the object of which is to popularize the new psychology. It is written by a magazine writer who purports to have received his stimulus and his detailed information from a Doctor X who is disclosed upon the last page to be Dr. Edward H. Reede, of Washington, D. C. The book is clearly written, the illustrations are well chosen, and the whole story is presented under several captions in an interesting, in fact in an entertaining way. There is a very interesting chapter on Roosevelt, which is the first effort, so far as the reviewer knows, to correlate his dominant characteristics with his early poor health. This analysis is distinctly along the lines of the Adlerian psychology and also is in harmony with the views of the Jung School to the effect that a neurotic must either remain an inferior person or if he succeeds in conquering his difficulties, he of necessity becomes a superior person: The Doctor departs from some of the more rigid Freudian tendencies. This is particularly marked in his emphasis on the herd instinct and his belief in the instinctive nature of the religious feeling. He too is disinclined to see as much sexuality in dreams, for example, as he thinks the Freudians do and cites a number of dreams the analysis of which did not discover any sexual repressions and yet were sufficient to favorably effect the symptoms.
If one were to criticize the book, and that after all is the function of the reviewer, it might be said that a certain amount of weight and authority is sacrificed to facility and nimbleness of expression. This perhaps is because it is written by a man whose business it has been to arrest public attention and who instinctively knows the technique of so doing. The general impression which his presentation gives is that the whole matter is rather too simple. In reading between the lines