The Primary Problems of Medical Psychology, A Textbook for Students and Practitioners. By Dr. Ch. De Montet, Professor of Medical Psychology at the University of Lausanne. Translated by A. Newbold. New York:  William Wood & Co., 1923. Pp.  142.

One wonders just why this little book has been sub-titled “A Textbook for Students and Practitioners” since it is only an essay attempting to deal with some of the problems and conflicts between positive science and metaphysical entities which still persist and are supported in their essentials by the opposition of the contradictory conceptions of determinism and spontaneity.

To the author consciousness is a primitive nonreducible fact, i.e., that an impression is the result of discrimination (distinction) and connection (association) which two operations are a single process and are produced simultaneously. Consciousness is the “genus” of which the dream, a lie, an emotion, hallucinations and other particular forms are “species” and thus are not independent, autonomous experiences or “states of consciousness,” so they must be studied as a whole and not artificially broken up. Several pages are devoted to the description and elaboration of concept which tends to do away with the subconscious and unconscious as well as all mechanistic theories of life.

The second part of the book is concerned with the “faculty of consciousness,” and with the hypothesis that all functions are mutually dependent. Based upon these theories the author has conceived and expressed in xecellently written paragraphs a therapeutic approach to disorders of the personality, worth consideration yet adding little if anything to the methods of modern psychotherapy.

Lewis