BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



The permanent value of Freudianism in the renaissance of 

 psychology is not clear. It has contributed a new vocabu- 

 lary to general usage, has influenced literature and morals 

 and conversation, has reinterpreted social prejudices and 

 personal failings. Its scientific status can hardly be ap- 

 praised until the cultist phases of the movement have 

 disappeared.^ Freud himself, in his later years, has turned 

 to still more speculative formulations of the hidden depths 

 of the personality, speaking of the super-ego and the "Id" 

 and even of a meta-psychology embracing the system of 

 strivings of which the complexities of life consist. But 

 whether a structure or a superstructure, this interpretation 

 of human motivation and personality must make terms 

 with the psycho-biological foundations. Dr. Rivers is 

 almost the only one who has attempted to determine the 

 evolutionary significance of that stupendous growth from 

 primitive instincts to the elaborately rationalized emo- 

 tional conflicts which characterizes the modern mind, 

 often to its undoing. 



It is because we live in an increasingly complicated 

 world and have become mind-conscious in desirable and 

 undesirable ways, that the Freudian type of psychology 

 has made such a wide appeal. The problems of emotional 

 and intellectual adjustment have become acute; we seek 

 happiness by tortuous routes. The big brain has unbalanced 

 its subordinate yet more fundamental partners in an inte- 

 grated enterprise. 



With as many ill from mental disturbances as from all 

 bodily ailments combined, the safeguarding of the mental 

 economy by intimate knowledge of the higher motivation 



* Fortunately there has appeared, at this critical juncture, a most discerning 

 critique of the movement: "The Structure and Meaning of Psychoanalysis," by 

 William Healey, Augusta F. Bronner, and Anna Mae Bowers, Alfred A. Knopf, 

 Inc., New York, 1930. For the first time there is available a systematic account, 

 with an able interpretative comment, of the significance of the entire movement 

 following upon the epochal innovations of Freud. 



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