The New Field of Psychology. The Psychological Functions and Their Government. By Madison Bentley. New York:  D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., 1934. Pp.  439. $3.

This is an introductory text in psychology by the head of the Psychological Department in Cornell University. It represents, as the author

says in his preface, a radical departure from the point of view of his earlier “Field of Psychology.” Physiology and psychology are understood as dealing with types of function of the living and active body, thus relieving psychology once and for all of the monstruous mind-body problem. Psychology “treats of certain activities of the living organism”; by this simple sentence Dr. Bentley exorcises all the old and troublesome concepts of mind, consciousness, soul, will, and so on, almost as completely as the behaviorist with whom he so heartily disagrees. Given, he says, such as organism as our own, reduced to its physiological processes, let us ask ourselves what psychological performances—given its structure, its necessities, and its organic resources—we might reasonably expect to complete such a picture. These psychological performances or functions are found to be, first, of an apprehending kind, which we name “perceiving,” “remembering,” and “imagining”; an executive kind, which are found in the many forms of action and in emotion; and, finally, what used to be known as the higher mental processes and which are now named “searching,” “inspecting,” “comprehending,” and “elaborated thinking.” So much for the psychological functions of the organism, which cannot run of themselves but must be conducted, controlled, and actively regulated—in short, governed. The governors are of three kinds: extra-organic, organic, and historical, the first comprising the immediate environment, the second, the structure and physiology of the organism itself, and the third, the historical residues, not only from the individual's own past but from that of the family and the race. Upon this basis Dr. Bentley builds an excellent discussion, confining himself strictly to the field as outlined, and not being tempted astray by any of the various subdivi