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Several years ago, in 1917, to be exact, there appeared the English translation of a work by a Swiss pastor, ambitiously called “The Psychoanalytic Method.” Nor did the book altogether fail to redeem the promise of its title. Without any especial claim to originality, Dr. Pfister set forth in those 600 pages a fairly comprehensive outline of
the method, illustrated by many examples of its application, examples chiefly taken, as might have been expected from the author's vocation, from children and adolescents.
In his present book he has attempted to enlarge somewhat upon his theme. One might imagine that, having defended his espousal of psychoanalysis to his colleagues and having proved to them, by his own example if in no other way, that the psychoanalyst himself is not necessarily branded with the mark of the beast, he had wrung from them a reluctant assent to the doctrine that it was a legitimate method. “But,” they might say, “Suppose that it is useful in a few, carefully selected cases of nervous disorder, is it of any other service to humanity?” This book is the answer to that question.
Pfister begins with a resume of the whole subject, repeating much of the material of “The Psychoanalytic Method.” The next part of the book is occupied with an attempt to show some of the psychic sources of artistic inspiration. The method used is a study of ten pictures painted by an artist whose psychic life was being investigated to some extent by Pfister. Five of these were painted under the influence of introversion and five under the influence of regression. The text itself is quite interesting, but the pictures themselves are not reproduced in this edition, and so this section of the book loses most of its value. Next comes a short chapter called “The Psychology of Peace and War.” This contains nothing important. Of more value is that third of the book devoted to interrelations of psychoanalysis and philosophy. He insists upon Freud's status as a positivist and alludes t