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Dr. Waldstein first wrote and published this work in 1897. Now, ten years subsequent to the author's demise, a kinsman has it republished, at a time most inauspicious for this calibre of production to draw any attention. At the time of its first printing, the book, no doubt, reflected no small amount of credit on Dr. Waldstein as there were few individuals extant at that time who were farsighted enough to perceive the tremendous influence that forgotten and repressed cravings exerted on the individual's later behavior reactions. True, even to-day, there are many who fail to appreciate the great import of the pioneer work of Charcot, Janet, and others, to the development of dynamic psychology. The psychoanalytic movement, however, has gone forward with such rapid strides, that a book like “The Subconscious Self” cannot be expected to excite any appreciable interest in 1926 psychopathological circles.
The author, in brief, simply calls attention to the fact that all behavior, whether poetic production, religious activity, crime, or what not, is inevitably conditioned by a factor which he, following Charcot, calls the subconscious self. Had he revised the work, he most probably would have brought it abreast with present day conceptions of dynamic psychopathology, which have succeeded in linking, quite specifically, unconscious stimuli and definite behavior reactions resulting therefrom.
The eulogistic biographical testimonials of his colleagues which occupy the first half of the book smack of Rotary and belong, not in this work, but in Mr. Menken's “Americana” section of the American Mercury.
Cassity