2 2 



NATURE 



[September ii, 1919 



With obligation to the State he is not concerned. 

 In the Army, on the other hand, everything must 

 be done for the good of the Service." In 

 other words, a man engaged in a desperate 

 enterprise, such as war, may be allowed in the 

 common interest to take risks, often small, which 

 his medical attendant would not sanction at 

 ordinary times, and some education is required to 

 alter the civil point of view. 



With the writer's advocacy of professional 

 conferences and instruction there can be nothing 

 but sympathy ; he does not appear to be aware 

 of the developments on these lines, which were so 

 great a feature in other theatres of war, and have 

 assuredly come to stay. 



Some 100 pages are taken up in considering the 

 question of boards and the physical classification 

 of recruits and soldiers. They form interesting 

 and instructive reading. The author states : " In 

 general, about one-third of the B class personnel 

 who arrived in Egypt were immediately placed in 

 the A category." They were sent to the front 

 and made good. He roundly accuses the boards 

 at home of classifying men too low and of de- 

 pleting the reserves by an undue number of rejec- 

 tions. It is interesting to recall that a Parlia- 

 mentary Committee sat to investigate the wide- 

 spread allegations in this country that home 

 boards had classified the men too high. 



But it is in the concluding part of the book, 

 dealing with the organisation of the military 

 medical service and the modifications suggested, 

 that the main interest lies. There is common 

 agreement as to several of the desiderata men- 

 tioned. Some are on their way to attaimnent, 

 whilst others have already been attained. 



Allowing for a certain amount of special 

 pleading, the book raises many points of 

 cardinal interest, lucidly, if forcibly, expressed, 

 and there are not many connected with the 

 medical services, either as clinicians or adminis- 

 trators, who will not glean some profit from a 

 perusal of its pages, whilst the general reader will 

 not find it too technical for his enjoyment. 



NERVOUS DISORDERS; TWO POINTS OF 



VIEW. 

 (i) What is Psychoanalysis? By Dr. I. H. Coriat. 



Pp. 124. (London : Kegan Paul, Trench, 



Trubner, and Co., Ltd., 1919.) Price 3:?. 6d. 



net. 

 (2) Traitenient des Psychoncvroses de Guerre. 



Par G. Roussy, J. Boisseau, M. d'CEIsnitz. 



(Collection Horizon.) Pp. 191. (Paris: Masson 



et Cie, 1918.) Price 4 francs. 



(i) r^R. CORIAT'S attempt to collect into one 

 ■'--' small volume the chief articles of the 

 psychoanalytic faith, and, moreover, to lay them 

 out along the rigid scaffolding of a shorter cate- 

 chism, is certainly an act of bravery or temerity. 

 The reader is asked to defer his decision between 

 these two descriptions until he has finished this 

 NO. 2602, VOL. 104] 



very interesting and challenging small book. For 

 the concreteness — one had almost written the 

 ferro-concreteness — of this exposition cannot fail 

 to delight, at one stroke, the erudite student of 

 Freud, who has long been yearning for some 

 psychoanalytic Baedeker to indicate with a 

 judicious distribution of asterisks the really im- 

 portant halting-places on this perilous journey ; 

 the implacable enemy of the new movement, who 

 will surely regard the pages of this book as a 

 conveniently bound packet of targets ; and the 

 teacher of psychology, who can now prepare 

 three full lectures on what someone has assured 

 him Freud really means. 



Most people must have felt that such a book 

 ought to appear some day, though, perhaps, not 

 everyone would have regarded the present time 

 as suitable. But Dr. Coriat might immediately 

 point out, and with justice, that the procrastinator 

 is a person upon whose mentality more light has 

 been thrown from Vienna than from any otlier 

 quarter in recent years, and certainly there is 

 little that can be called undecided in the way 

 the present book is written. 



The answer to the question " What is Psycho- 

 analysis?" occupies ii'8 pages, at which stage 

 Dr. Coriat ends, and, one presumes. Dr. Adler 

 ^nd Dr. Jung would desire to begin. For it 

 seems clear that the present answer is the answer 

 of Freud alone. And this is, we think, a pleasing 

 feature, if one could ensure that the book did not 

 fall into the eager hands of the entirely 

 uninitiated. The book is, so to speak, a diagram 

 of Freud's teaching. When we can place b^- it 

 similar diagrams of Adler's and Jung's theories 

 (drawn very strictly to scale, with the congruent 

 portions clearly indicated) and get them well into 

 our heads, discussions on psychoanalysis may 

 gain in clarity what they will assuredly lose in 

 heat. 



But, like many diagrams, the present one often 

 seems to err on the side of too great simplicity, 

 and it is too heavily outlined. The book reads, 

 in fact, far too glibly. It seems scarcely fair 

 to Freud to write without "further explanation of 

 the "way that a normal individual conveniently 

 ' forgets ' the unpleasant experiences of his life " 

 (p. 14), and to say dogmatically : " If the nervous 

 symptoms grow worse during the course of the 

 analysis, this must be interpreted as due either 

 to the resistances or to the course of the disease, 

 and not to the treatment " (p. 70); or to ask the 

 question of questions "Can psychoanalysis be 

 harmful?" and to "answer" it by merely 

 remarking that "wild" psychoanalysis can, and 

 that the analyst may fall into errors. What the 

 average man presumably wants to know is 

 whether, in any circumstances, orthodox, 

 thorough-going, complete psychoanalysis can be 

 harmful, and, if so", why? Especially, perhaps, 

 does the average English reader, who has seen 

 the course of the thread linking the writings ofj 

 McDougall, Shand, and Trotter on one hand] 

 with those of Freud and Jung on the other, as; 



