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This is a very imposing contribution made up of Part I, consisting of 54 pages of general remarks on metapsychology and Parts II-VI of 50 case histories studied in accordance with the principles laid down in the first half hundred pages and which latter run to a sum total of 761 pages with index.
The opening pages offer a sketchy and not too clear an outline of the Freudian conceptions intermingled with those more particularly of Stekel. Dr. London makes claim to having followed out a preliminary strict Freudian analysis and then some years later put himself under Dr. Stekel's procedure.
The fifty cases offered in reality follow the Stekel classifications and the material runs to the form well known in Stekel's writings. They lack, however, the sagacity of this author's insight and are weak and immensely prolix copies of his later master's style.
Not only are the case histories very long drawn out but they cross and recross their track and are in abominable literary as well as scientific form.
Nevertheless there is much material of value if one has the time to wade through pages and pages of words and the capacity and patience to bring the pertinent matters to a focus. The accounts are so jerky and interlarded with irrelevant remarks. When the author would summarize his conclusions they are far from satisfactory.
At times Ysehan had much difficulty with the rather loose, rambling, style of Stekel's works but London outruns his master at least two to one and, as noted, is dull, otiose and often full of contradictions. Thus p. 123: “Naked women do not interest him,” and p. 124, “He peeks through a key hole to see a nude woman.” This is a crude type of contradiction. There are many of such complicated nature.
Our judgment concerning the dream analyses of the patients presented is that they are grossly superficial and of little scientific value. The only saving grace lies in the broad clinical canvas of neuroses, psychoneuroses and psychoses that is presented and even this