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.
The criticisms of psychoanalysis have come with monotonous invariableness from its enemies, who, with very few exceptions, showed clearly in their criticisms that they knew very little about what they were criticising, and in many instances apparently cared less, for their reaction was obviously an emotional one exclusively. Now comes Dr. MacCurdy's book, written by a man who for years has not only been sympathetically attuned to the psychoanalytic movement, but has been practising it. Psychoanalysis should welcome criticisms from its friends and the present book is an effort along these lines.
The various concepts of psychoanalysis can by no means be conceived as simple or necessarily easy of comprehension, and so it is well worth while to attempt restatement and accurate definition. This the author does in the fore-part of the work, later on attempting a more comprehensive critique.
The impression that one gets after laying down the book is that an enormous amount of effort has been put forth without corresponding gains. This is perhaps the rule in the realm of scientific thought, but the feeling that the book gives one is that the whole matter is made somewhat unnecessarily complicated, that discrepancies in Freud's statements over a long period of years are made too much of, and that issues are too frequently confused rather than clarified. The difficulty of stating some of the concepts in clearcut language, however, must not be lost sight of. The chapter on the origin of symbols particularly shows this and seems to the reviewer to be a very worth-while effort to state the problem of symbolism.