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This ninety-six-page monograph is a very intriguing one, and at the same time a work of much practical as well as of theoretical importance.
In the first portion of the book Abraham deals with psychoanalytic experiences with manic-depressive psychoses—chiefly limited to the depressed phases. Following the well known results of loss of object love with introjection and consequent regression into a depression, Abraham very lucidly traces the pathway taken by the regressive portion of the libido and even more interestingly shows how to deal with it in order to lead it to new object love with a more complete grade of genital organization.
In the second section of the monograph we find a most stimulating discussion of the evolution of object love in which parallels between the ontogenetic stages as revealed in analysis are compared with embryological neurological details of the relationships between the mouth and anal erotisms. Analytic experience knows of the transcendant importance of early arriving anal-erotic activities. Abrahams shows certain neurological mechanisms in the animal phylum, related to the neuromesenteric connections of the intestinal and spinal neuropore, and offers certain suggestions as to their being structural correlates of psychical associative material. In certain animals and in the embryos of others the mouth end and the genitals are one—in evolution the separation to the anal-cloacal end is well known. This thought, not absolutely novel, has been most ingeniously developed.