Outline of Psychology. By William McDougall, Professor of Psychology in Harvard University. New York:  Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923. Pp.  456. Price, $2.50.

It is interesting to observe how the really modern psychologists are getting away from the old orthodox psychology, formal in its methods, sterile in its applications. They are groping about for a tertium quid, an animus, something that makes the wheels go around. Woodworth calls it a drive; Watson, a conditioned reflex; McDougall, an instinct; and Freud, the libido.

In his present book Professor McDougall has given the scientific world an excellent idea of where he stands. He is securely entrenched for the most part in orthodox psychology, but he is groping out towards some understanding of the emotions; his mind is a little befogged by something which he calls mental telepathy, and in his soul there is a dim idea of God.

Behaviorism is anathema to him, and in his Preface he takes a shot at it: “Recently it (mechanistic psychology) has begotten upon physiology a most misshapen and beggarly dwarf, namely, behaviorism, which just now is rampant in this country.” This outburst has evoked its natural reaction, and in the columns of the New Republic John B. Watson has given him a retort discourteous.