Dreadsand Besetting Fears (Including States of Anxiety, Their Causes and Cure). By Tom A. Williams, Neurologist to Freedman's Hospital, Washington, D. C. Boston:  Little, Brown and Company, 1923. Pp.  217. Cloth, $1.75.

This book, which is the seventh contribution of the Mind and Health Series, edited by H. Addington Bruce, is composed of the following chapters dealing with the various emotional and instinctive aspects of fear and its effect upon the personality: Early Origins of Dreads; Bashful-ness and Kindred States; College Breakdowns; Fear and Stammering; Anxiety States; Occupational Phobias; Fear of Crowds, Open Spaces, etc.; Other Common Phobias; Physical Conditions and Fear; Heredity and Fear; Fear by Induction; The Fascination of Fear; The Utilization and Management of Fear; The Dispelling of Fear.

Each of these topics is profusely illustrated by short accounts of cases treated by the special methods of the author; however, to the modern psychopathologist the explanations of the underlying mechanisms in these cases seem exceedingly superficial and wholly inadequate to account for the morbid reactions. The exponents of analytic psychiatry have repeatedly proven the presence of and are constantly emphasizing the frequency of the erotic craving fixations and distortions in the determination of anxiety or fear states, while Dr. Williams has either entirely ignored these fundamental issues, or at most has assigned to them a very subordinate role, apparently satisfying himself with more simple upper levels of interpretation.

While in general the contents of this book are interestingly set forth, and it is well seasoned with wholesome advice, its value will be greatly limited by a misleading overemphasis on simple fright stimuli, and a corresponding underemphasis on the more fundamental and disturbing sex factors.

Lawis