306 



DISCOVERY 



Mr. Trotter, then, in a sense, belongs to those writers 

 who — to borrow the poem's jolly rhythm — " derive 

 their inspiration from the works of Jung and Freud," 

 but the colour of the illumination which he focuses 

 upon the present state of society from these writings 

 is quite refreshingly new. Even his attitude towards 

 the psvcho-analysts themselves is original. At times 

 one almost gets the impression that he is shocked 

 by the respectability and conventionality of the 

 Vienna school of thought. We hasten to say that it 

 is as a biologist that he is so distressed. He points 

 out a lacuna in the Freudian social psychology which 

 seems so glaring — after one has read Mr. Trotter — 

 that one is left wondering how it could have been 

 allowed to gape so long. Accepting the psycho- 

 analysts' account of mental conflict and repression, 

 he emphasises that, while vividly describing and at- 

 tempting to explain the process of repression, they often 

 appear compliantly to have taken for granted the 

 permanence — perhaps even the Tightness — of the 

 social barriers which bring it about. And some of 

 those barriers are the jealousy of the older towards 

 the younger generation, the apathy and comfort of 

 the well-fed, the serenity and calm which are often 

 merely another aspect of unimaginative stolidity, the 

 righteous satisfaction which is sometimes difficult to 

 distinguish from Pecksniffery or Junkerism. 



So far the psycho-analytic school has cast little 

 direct light upon an important question : How many 

 of these imposing hurdles in Ufe's obstacle-race could 

 be desirablv lopped down or even removed? Mr. 

 Trotter reminds us of the cynical complacency with 

 which the middle-aged write of the " storm and stress " 

 of adolescence, as if these are due merely to internal 

 — and therefore, doubtless, beneficial— growing pains, 

 and in no way caused by friction against shackles 

 which need never have been forged. A year or so 

 ago a reviewer put the same thing in another way when 

 he described a book as suggesting to parents a number 

 of ingenious solutions of children's religious difficulties 

 which ought never to have occurred. 



Mr. Trotter himself says, " However much one may 

 be impressed by the greatness of the edifice which 

 Freud has built up, and by the soundness of his archi- 

 tecture, one can scarcely fail, on coming into it from 

 the bracing atmosphere of the biological sciences, to 

 be oppressed by the odour of humanity by which it is 

 pervaded. One finds everywhere a tendency to the 

 acceptance of human standards, and even sometimes 

 of human pretensions, which cannot fail to produce a 

 certain uneasiness as to the validity, if not of his 

 doctrines, at any rate of the forms in which they are 

 expounded." 



Another conception of this writer which immediately 

 attracts the psychologist's attention is his suggested 



division of minds into sensitive, and resistive or 

 " normal." His two pictures, singularly incisive, though 

 perhaps outlined with too hard a pencil, describe tyjjes 

 known to all of us ; the person unusually pervious to the 

 lessons of his own personal experience, even when it 

 contradicts the teaching of his leaders and his elders, 

 and the one with his ears constantly pricked towards 

 the herd, immediately rejecting or questioning the 

 vaHdity of his own personal experience when it con- 

 flicts with the beliefs and traditions of his community. 

 Such a mind's " resilience to the depressing influence 

 of facts " has attracted many thinkers before Mr. 

 Trotter, but probably none before him have used 

 Freud's teaching in an attempt to discover the bio- 

 logical process by which such a mind's protective 

 armour grows. As Mr. Trotter's thesis is not only 

 that these resistive minds tend by their very stabihty 

 to become the backbone of the State, but that the post- 

 war condition of our own country, and that of many 

 others, is largely attributable to their dominance by 

 this type, his book will interest many to whom psycho- 

 logy is little more than a name. 



This review has attempted to discuss one only of 

 the many briOiant aspects of this book. The eloquent 

 postscript of 1919 speaks for itself and needs no 

 exposition by others. 



Mr. Trotter is a surgeon. Here we see him cutting 

 deep into the tissues of the body politic, wisely declining 

 to administer an anssthetic, and laying bare society's 

 malformations and pathological adhesions. The 

 professional surgeons of the mind may— they almost 

 certainly will — criticise the manner of his dissection. 

 But, at any rate, they should find it rather difficult 

 to regard him as an unqualified practitioner. 



Wireless in Aircraft 



By J. Brown, M.B.E., M.C., M.A., B.Sc. 



It is not proposed here to deal with any of the technical 

 difficulties associated with wireless signalling from 

 aircraft, nor to give descriptions of the special appara- 

 tus required for this purpose, as the understanding of 

 these requires a certain amount of specialised and 

 technical knowledge. It will suffice to outline some 

 of the recent developments which have taken place 

 in aircraft wireless, and show to what use these have 

 been, and are being, put. 



Wireless telegraphy, though quite a young branch 

 of electrical science, was well known as a successful 

 means of communication before the recent war : many 

 land and ship stations existed, the value of wireless 



