Hysterien und Zwangsneurosen. By Otto Fenichel.  Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag. Wien. Mk. 8.

This modern writer on psychoanalysis opens the first of two volumes on the neuroses with the statement that to the practical psychoanalyst the study of the neuroses bears the same relation as the study of pathology

does to clinical medicine. The experience which is gained through psychoanalytic investigation may by inductive logical processes be wrought into a body of formulations on a sound scientific basis. Thus the laws underlying the causation, the form and the development of the neurosis may be understood and a causal therapy and prophylaxis be built up. One cannot as yet hope to obtain from the neurosis what general medicine does not yet obtain from pathology; namely, principles. The effort at “law” formulation too is still general and often breaks down on too rigid an application in individual instances. The practicing physician should realize that only a general orientation is possible, but it should not be forgotten that this orientation alone does not reach out to the treatment of every special case.

In the neuroses psychoanalysis sees the results of a conflict between the instinct life and those opposing portions of the personality which necessitates that the work of the instincts appear in a pathological form. Analysis interests itself directly in this instinct life which seeks to free itself from these important repressions. It discovers thereby the enormous world of the unconscious; finds with its instinct conceptions the biological foundations of psychology and sustains the dynamic economic conception of the mental life.

With such a general point of view these very fascinating volumes are written. It may be noted that the author speaks of the “hysterias,” not “hysteria” and the enormous variability in the clinical pictures utilizing the conversion principle is emphasized. Here the more limited types of defense hysteria, anxiety hysteria, and hysteriform disorders are dealt with.

There is much original matter in both sections of the work and Fenichel's