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A very complete and systematic presentation of the trends which have led to psychology as it is now conceived. Roughly speaking, it begins
more particularly at that point where the world within begins to be appreciated for what it is rather than to be mistaken for something occurring outside in accordance with what we now call the mechanism of projection. Then there is an account of consciousness, which, having been discovered, is sought to be understood by a process of analysis or atomization. Slowly there enters into the picture an appreciation of emotional factors in addition to those of sensation, perception and judgment. Then finally there begins to emerge the totalitarian point of view, which considers the whole person rather than some fragment. Along through the story there are tacit assumptions of a distinction between the known and the knower. The question is implicit whether behind the contents of consciousness there is a substance, a being, that knows this content. It is the old story of whether or no there is a soul; and it is interesting to realize that this question has been answered in the affirmative in the original experiences of man in his primitive state, that with the onset of the materialistic nineteenth century it was thrown out of court, and that now it is creeping back in the guise of one of the aspects of modern psychology. And so in the latter part of the book there is disclosed not only the question of a super-individual psychic life, but definitely the question, Is there a soul ?
For readers of the REVIEW it may be said that a very reasonable amount of space is allotted to a discussion of the psychology of the unconscious, in which the psychoanalytic school and its various offshoots are represented and in proportion to the rest of the book given their just due.
A very able presentation of an intricate subject, which the author has not attempted to classify in chronological order but has rather told the story in accordance with its functio