In psychoanalysis an act is nothing, a tendency everything. The latter must be changed. In analysis of one's self one must avoid all tendency to self depreciation, since all must make mistakes. One should also distrust in himself whatever savors of emotional excess.
There is no radical difference between the neurotic and sound subject in respect to the presence of unreasonable fears, compulsions and obsessions. Stress of circumstances causes even the normal man to show objectionable traits. Mental disease-phenomena, like physical, indicate natural reactions, or "attempts at repair" such as are found in the organic and even inorganic worlds.
Treatment by psychoanalysis represents an education—the removal of inhibitions which are fixations or arrests.
The fifth chapter is in a way a resume of what the author had previously said. He also seeks to reduce his teachings to a tabulation. The rationalisation or adaptation of life progresses in proportion as the individual is mature, but here maturity is by no means equivalent to age. The process also is active in the immature child.
A subject is usually quite unaware of his fixations and explains the results of his internal conflicts by false reasoning. Rationalisation in this connection becomes a bad habit.
All motives are creative. The act is not the result of the immediate motive but of all those which preceded it. The final act throws no light on the original motives.
In speaking of certain adults as children who never grew up, we are referring to a much larger class than is commonly understood. All who attain mature years with fixations are to be regarded as children. All individualists belong here unless their individualism is merely a stepping stone to altruism. Indeed, we see in all men a desire to place themselves on a pinnacle. This craving seeks expression in a thousand acts. Even if outgrown it may assert itself in times of stress. It is of benefit at times when individuals espouse just but unpopular causes. What we ordinarily call courage involves self assertion but a higher courage is involved in refraining from certain things.
All individuals also have occasional cravings to get away from responsibility and back to rest and pleasure. We long to get back to a theoretical state of childhood, as the infant longs to return to his mother's body.
For a number of reasons this not a work to be criticized. The author does not mean to be dogmatic. His dicta, while they may have the ipse dixit flavor, are not meant to be axioms. The creative energy of the mind can formulate these dicta and they must clash with the convictions of others. It is easy to deride the method as a method, but we must judge it by its results. In Emerson's hands it became a profound stimulus to thought to people of quite dissimilar mental makeup. In like manner the author's work will prove of the highest suggestive value to the reader, and especially the materialistic reader. But aside from the general character of the book we must not forget that it has a very definite object, to wit, to elevate psychoanalysis to the highest planes of philosophical speculation and to remove the prejudices of those who profess to go to the other extreme and see in it only the slime of the pit. The author's attempt to bring it in unison with the eternal verities is deserving of the highest commendation and illustrates his deep faith in the nobility of this new resource for understanding the spiritual side of man. L. PIERCE CLARK, M. D.
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY: VOL. I, THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN VOL. II, THE
PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING. By Edward L. Thorndike. Published by Teachers
College, Columbia University, New York, 1913.