REVIEWS 535 



judicial rather than terse. It will, therefore, appeal more strongly to the post- 

 graduate student than to the undergraduate. 



The text is illustrated with thirty-five figures and upwards of forty tables. A 

 full bibliography is appended. This is classified by chapters, but its subdivisions 

 are unfortunately separated from the chapters to which they belong. Apart from 

 this bibliography there is no index of authors. There is, however, an excellent 

 index of subjects. 



We would repeat that the monograph is one of the best of an excellent 

 series. 



W. L. Symes. 



MEDICINE 



The New Psychiatry; being the Morrison Lectures delivered at the Royal 

 College of Physicians of Edinburgh, March 191 5, by Dr. W. H. B. 

 Stoddart. [Pp. iv + 66.] (London : Bailliere, Tindall & Cox. Price 

 2s. 6d. net.) 



Mental problems are never easy to solve, and there is always something baffling, 

 alluring, and mysterious in the endeavour to explain the working of the normal 

 human mind. Much more difficult must be the effort to investigate the intricacies 

 of the abnormal mind, so that there is a natural tendency to welcome any fresh 

 means of exploration that may appear, provided only that these means are 

 advocated from a reputable source. For some time past the old method of 

 psychological analysis by observation and induction has been supplemented by 

 what has been abbreviated into " psycho-analysis," but why this method is de- 

 nominated the " new " psychiatry remains untold ; and the author of these lectures 

 which demonstrate the utility of the method, does not attempt to supply the 

 answer. 



To describe any method of analysis as " new,'' or to apply the epithet to a 

 creed or a belief, is to imply some divergence from previously accepted facts ; but 

 the only thing that is new in the " new " psychiatry is to trace the origin of all 

 normal and abnormal mental phenomena to the primitive instincts of sex and 

 love. Some years ago the "new " psychology was brought forward with a flourish 

 of trumpets as a discovery, but its only significance was to imply that all experi- 

 mental methods which could be supplied from the laboratory would now be added 

 to observations and inferences drawn from introspection ; in another sphere the 

 " new " theology implied fundamental changes, yet it was based upon common 

 doctrinal dogmas. The only effect of these " new " additions has been to 

 strengthen our belief in the old, and, in regard to the subject of this review 

 to question the value of what purports to be of extreme help in the diagnosis and 

 the treatment of mental diseases. 



The first to initiate the study of mental phenomena in relation to sex was 

 Sigmund Freud, of Vienna, and he has few more devoted disciples in this country 

 than Dr. Stoddart. K. Yung, of Zurich, is another physician of experience and 

 repute who represented the so-called Freudian School, but he has lately broken 

 away completely from the teachings of his master. The essence of Freud's 

 psychiatry is the assertion that erotic and sexual perversions are at the root of all 

 analysis of the unconscious mind, and that these are the motive power of the con- 

 scious mind and the causa causans of all abnormal mental symptoms ; the conscious 

 active mind of thought, feeling, and will, according to Freud, being a commingling 

 of the unconscious and the conscious. This is no new discovery, for it has always 

 been within the knowledge of every physician practising in mental diseases that 



