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A young graduate in philosophy makes this his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Erlangen. It is in the philosophical mould and in inverse ratio to a criticism leveled at Freud's frequent demand for empirical experience the thesis shows no vestige of any real acquaintance with actual psychoanalytic experience, the product, somewhat ironically noted “as being gained in physicians' consultation rooms.”
Where else should one expect to learn of the “natural history of the soul” to cite Bleuler's title? Certainly not with the philosophers and their numerous discarded “Baedekers,” as Freud himself has lamented.
The critique, chieflly destructive, is built on four chapters: The System of the Unconscious, The System of the Mental Subject, The Higher Psychical Activities, and Freud and Reality.
As stated there is no real touch with actual analysis but a running summary of negative opinions from Mittenzway, Schultz, Kronfeld, Bumke, Hörngewald, Wittels' first book on Freud, Michaelis, W. Stern, Jung and the numerous objectors, few of whom have had any contact with actual psychoanalysis.
Here and there one finds some laudatory phrases. The old bogey of pansexualism is dragged out and the whole conception of ‘sublimation’ very amateurishly discussed. Jung's note re rigid dogmatism, etc., is recited, as if anything in the whole category of psychology could be more dogmatic than “types.”
On page 87 the cat is out of the bag. The author himself “Israelitisch,” quotes Wittels' boners about Freud's inferiority feelings because of his Jewish ancestry.
Having just reread H. G. Wells' sections on the spread of the eastern races about the time of the dissolution of the Roman empire, this racial note strikes one as peculiarly unscientific, to say the least.
[J.]