“The most useful part of the book deals with religious education and illustrates the baneful effects of early religious fears. The author is dogmatic in his statements regarding the religious and non-ethical life of primitive people. Most of the readers, familiar with psychoanalytic literature, will turn from the book with the conviction that a satisfactory discussion of religion and the new psychology is hardly to be expected from within the ministerial profession. The book would serve a useful purpose were it not unlikely to be read by those who need it most.” E. R. Groves
+ − Am J Soc 26:376 N ’20 240w + Booklist 17:8 O ’20
“Rarely, perhaps never, has a writer failed so signally to accomplish his aim. The book is a heterogeneous mass of poorly digested, badly assimilated psychology, and worse religion, while from the pedagogical point of view that which he says has been said many times.” Joseph Collins
− Bookm 52:172 O ’20 620w Int J Ethics 31:116 O ’20 80w
“That much is here done to illustrate the indubitable connection between the religious motives of mankind and other motives and faculties, is true; it is also true that the book by swallowing the Freudian system of sex symbols too uncritically makes itself a candidate for laughter in that day, sure to come, when the excesses of Freud will recall the excesses of Max Müller.”
+ − Nation 111:695 D 15 ’20 120w
Reviewed by G. E. Partridge
N Y Times p28 D 26 ’20 570w
“Like many other books on psycho-analysis, this one proves that until expounders of this theory develop greater balance or a keener sense of humor in considering the phenomena of sex, there is small likelihood of their labors resulting in a substantial addition to our scientific understanding of ourselves.”
− Springf’d Republican p6 Ag 30 ’20 190w The Times [London] Lit Sup p863 D 16 ’20 100w