NEW BIOLOGICAL BOOKS 



455 



AN EXPERIMENT WITH TIME. 

 By J- W. Dunne. The Macmillan Co. 



$z. 50 5! x 8f ; 2.08 New York 



This is an interesting, if not entirely 

 convincing, attempt to show that man's 

 mind is capable of the correct anticipation 

 of future events in the phenomenal world, 

 as a definite and regular thing in contrast 

 to a merely accidental coincidence. The 

 book starts with an account of the 

 author's dreams, and ends with a new 

 theory of the universe. It thus traverses 

 a good deal of ground. The pathway 

 gets very obscure at times, and we fancy 

 that most readers will have a good deal 

 of difficulty in following Mr. Dunne all 

 the way. But the facts which he records 

 are extraordinary, and cannot be accounted 

 for by any other theory at the moment. 

 So on this account, if no other, Mr. 

 Dunne's theory deserves respectful consid- 

 eration. 



STAMMERING. A Psychoanalytic Inter- 

 pretation. 

 By Isador H. Coriat. 



Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co. 

 $z.oo 6x9; viii + 68 New York 



The author is of the opinion that 

 "stammering is one of the severest forms 

 of the psychoneuroses and is not merely 

 a tic, an obsession, an auditory amnesia, 

 a spasm of coordination of the muscles 

 involved in speech, neither is it produced 

 by a conflict of languages, according to 

 the usual superficial interpretations of its 

 pathogenesis. It is preeminently what 

 may be termed an 'oral neurosis.' 



This thesis is supported, by psychoana- 

 lytic arguments. 



Excessive mouth erotism is, therefore, the basis 

 of stammering, a projection from the unconscious 

 I of the precipitated components of the oral stage of 

 'libido development. The mouth has become the 



principal and all-powerful organ of Iibidinal pleasure, 

 which is gratified, although against resistance, by 

 the oral discharge of speech. In several instances 

 there was noted, in addition to the frequent sucking 

 movements with the lips and excessive salivation 

 during the paroxysm of stammering, deep breathing, 

 rapid heart beat, perspiration, yawning; this was 

 followed by a feeling of relaxation after enunciation 

 of a difficult word. Here there could be observed 

 an actual reproduction, in adult life, of the relation- 

 ship of the infant to the nipple, a gratification of the 

 oral-erotic zone in pleasure sucking reenacted in 

 maturity. The original attachment of the sexual 

 excitation to the nutritional instinct, that is, the 

 oral phase of the libido, still dominates the adult 

 stammerer, in fact, the persistence of this phase 

 into maturity, produces stammering in order to 

 satisfy a compulsive-repetition, which resembles a 

 tic. 



A stutterer will never seem the same to 

 us after this! 



A STUDY OF N ATIO-R ACI AL MENTAL 

 DIFFERENCES. Genetic Psychology Mon- 

 ographs Vol. 1, Nos. 3 and 4. 

 By Nathaniel D. Mttron Hirsch. 



Clark University 

 $3.00 (paper) Worcester, Mass. 



$3.50 (cloth) 5! x 9; 168 



In this monograph the author gives a 

 report of his study on the mental capacity 

 of some of the nationalities to be found in 

 the American population. The subjects 

 were school children, American born, 

 both of whose parents were foreign born 

 and of the same nationality. Two other 

 groups were included in the study — white 

 American children and a group of Afro- 

 American children. . The author first gives 

 a brief summary of some of the results and 

 conclusions of other studies upon racial and 

 national psychological differences; then 

 follow chapters in which the tests given 

 the children are described in detail, and 

 the results analyzed. The highest testing 

 children were Polish Jews. The last three 



