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The author of this little monograph has attempted within a comparatively small space to offer an outline of the main elements in the psychological trends of our civilization. She has dealt clearly with the “law of effort,” has throughout emphasized the problem of phantasy vs. reality in the modes of reacting to difficulties, and has made judicial comments on the “facts “of evolution, as they apply to mental processes.
The text is divided into ten chapters in which such topics as superiority and inferiority mental trends, symbols of success and failure, phantasy and reality, repression and freedom, group life, the unconscious, the adult personality types, a theory of life, and social applications of psychological principles are presented in a concise manner telling what should be done to attain and maintain a peaceful and at the same time creative psychic attitude.
The dynamic approach to psychology shows more clearly the instinctive aspects of human behavior, points out how a healthy society depends upon a certain amount of freedom in the instinctive life, and reveals that only mentally healthy persons are capable of a full expression of group life and coöperation. The individual needs a comfortable adaptation to group life in order to realize his own potentialities and to exercise his possibilities toward a highly creative activity. Mental health and disorder can be expressed in terms of social reactions, as mental health means the efficient adaptation to other men, and mental disease implies isolation and anti-social thoughts and actions—“As far as the individuals within any society (such as, for the most convenient example, a nation) are unhealthy, the potential energy of that society as a unit for progressive action is lessened. The mentally unhealthy persons are the strands which run crosswise in the pattern and spoil the symmetry of the whole. A society cannot be at its best when some of its members are isolated units, contribution thing to the output of the who