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These two volumes of Stekel, translated by Van Teslaar, constitute Volume VI of Stekel's Störungen des Trieb- und Afifektlebens (Die parapathischen Erkrankungen), which is entitled in the original Impuls-handlungen, and which deals with Wandering Mania, Dipsomania, Cleptomania, Pyromania, and allied mental states.
The reviewer has had occasion repeatedly, as the various volumes of Stekel have come from press, to comment upon his writings, in each instance saying in effect that they are among the most attractive in psychoanalytic literature, and are replete, in fact packed through with thought-provoking suggestions. Perhaps many analysts will find fault with some of the specific theories advanced, but the suggestiveness and the very rich documentation with case records remain very important contributions whether the conclusions in every case are complied with or not.
Special mention should be made of Chapter III in Volume I, which is a description of flight into parapathiac delirium. It occupies about eighty pages and is an exceedingly interesting and detailed autobiographical account. Similarly, in Volume II, some fifty pages are devoted to an exceedingly interesting and somewhat detailed analysis of a pyromaniac.
As I have suggested before, one gets the impression from Stekel's writings that the whole matter of analysis and cure is in many instances at least a rather surprisingly easy, not to say simple affair. This is an impression one gets that is partly due to the remarkable facility with which Stekel writes. He finds his way among the intricacies of a given situation with apparent remarkable ease and transfers to the printed page that same feeling of being in complete command of the situation. One does not get the impression of a long, tedious and laborious procedure from the analyses described in these volumes, and I believe I am correct in my interpretation of the situation when I say that one at least of the reasons, if not the main reason for this result, is t