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These two volumes encompass a great many subjects that can be loosely grouped under Love and Sex Life. It is a type of book of which so many have recently appeared, attempting as they do to mediate between an expert group and the more intelligent stratum of the public. It addresses itself primarily to professional men and women—jurists, lawyers, educators, the general practitioner of medicine, and the more understanding laity. Because of the lively interest that exists in Freudian ideology it should not fail of wide appeal. For, in the main, these volumes have psychoanalytic presuppositions as their bases and represent the fruit of the Freudian venture into human motives and the resolution of those unhealthy forms of behavior which lead to the door of the psychiatrist.
Because of the infinite variety of nervous symptoms, the author chooses a novel literary form, not sanctioned by sciences in which the subject matter is more precise—the epistolary form. Just why the medium of letters should better preserve that sense of reciprocal and integrated relationship that exists between the milieu and the abnormal behavior which it conditions is not clear, but it is for that reason that he is prompted to use it. It must be admitted, however, that for popular usage it is well adapted.
In the first part of the book, which is devoted to general discussion, the author tells of his more general presuppositions. He assumes the usual dichotomy in the psychologic behavior of human beings, dividing it into an intellectual and affective phase. It is “in the disturbances of