Grundlagen Einer Neuer Psychiatrie. By Richard Wahle. Published by  Steyrermühl Verlag, Wien.

In this brochure of eighty-seven pages, intended for a quick orientation for the student, research worker, and layman, the author makes an introductory apology. The sins, he admits, are that, after all, the work is meant for research workers, hence the title is not quite right; then again the author expresses the belief that in spite of the excellent clinical work in psychiatry, it is still empty and lacks scientific foundation; the third is an opinion that all our psychical functions have certain fundamental features to be solved by physiological and psychological methods. The author's own study on the Origin of Character is the beacon light to show the way out of all of these difficulties.

At first a quick glance is directed to what to him is useless, i.e., scientifically useless. Here again he calls attention to his work on character as the model to lead one out of the jungle of superstitious, romantic, literary, and other types of human misunderstanding. Psychoanalysis is included among these nonusable conceptions. The phenomenalists, the intuitionists, in fact, everyone except himself, belongs to the same class. He uses his irony chiefly, however, for those who hold the “lustig-läppische idee” that the dream has any significance, at least in the Freudian sense.

The physico-chemical way is the only way out. Just how these ionic materials do what they do to the psyche he would like to, but does not, say. Hence his S.O.S. to psychology. Hence one must turn to brain fields. Even here there are absurd notions still abroad. Association fields, etc. The solution is to be found in his + R and - R, already outlined in his 1928 thesis. Those who react plus or minus to external stimuli: i.e., the happy and the unhappy. These primary impressions he would call J₁ or J₂ when repeated in we and he form. Psychiatry is much involved in these J₂ factors. Phantasy plays much with the J₂s. Now we have the key to the whole story.

Let us apply it. He begins with the melancholias. Natu