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This work is an enlarged and greatly revised version of the author's previously published book, “Dynamic Psychology.” However, the author's general point of view and his philosophical and religious bases remain unaltered. Dom Moore, monk of the Order of St. Benedict, is in all probability known to the readers of this Journal as a Catholic teacher and writer on psychology and psychiatry. He therefore needs no special introduction.
In this present work, he attempts, as he states, a synthesis of various currents in modern psychological thought. He undertakes to put together the main trends in philosophy, psychiatry and experimental psychology and fit them into the development of psychology as a whole. He is probably quite right in his attitude that these three fields have remained too isolated and suspicious of each other. Whereas, they in reality should supplement and support each other. The question then is raised as to how well our author has succeeded. He does well in welding some of the important experimental data into the main body of psychiatric knowledge of our emotional drives. But he fails badly, it seems to this reviewer, in his efforts at finding a basic philosophical foundation for the two fields. He remains eminently fair and honest in his criticism.
The book is divided into some seven parts, each containing one or more chapters. The parts are a historical introduction to psychology, a study of consciousness and the unconscious, a study of human emotional lite, its psychopathology and adjustment. This latter part includes discussions of anxiety, depression, defense—reactions, etc. The rest of the volume contains discussions of will and voluntary action as well as the problems of volitional adjustment (covering a minor dissertation on “formal causality and the philosophy of nature”). This brief outline will give the prospective reader the general plan and philosophical flavor of the book.
The author has introduced into the text case histories of clinical m