REVIEWS iReviews. A General Introduction to Psycho-analysis. By PROFESSOR SIGMUND FREUD, LL.D. Authorized translation with a preface by G. STANLEY HALL. 1920. New YorkZ Boni and Liveright. To give a lucid, exposition of psycho-analytic doctrines in a comparatively small compass is by no means an easy task, but herein it is accomplished ideally. The book consists of a series of twenty-eight lectures which the author gave to a lay audience. It is written in almost conversational style, and though the subject must necessarily involve psychological matter that is more or less abstruse, Freud attacks the problems logically step by step, and so anticipates- and answers the natural objections and difficulties which arise, that only the most obtuse could fail to follow his reasoning and recognize the justness of most of his conclusions. Th e essentials of the author's work are contained within these pages, except that his theory of wit is only referred to in a paragraph (p. 201), where he says: "The origin of wit lies in a foreconscious train of thought which is left over for a moment to uinconscious manipulation, from which it then emerges as a joke." Quite rightly the first section is devoted to the psychology of errors, because not only do the slips of everydav life especially appeal to all, but through the study of their mechanisms we get the simplest insight into unconscious motivation. The problems of the dream and its interpretation are dealt with in the second section, so that afterwards the pathology of the neuroses may be the more adequately understood. Sleep is regarded as a reversion to an intra-uterine state, and dream study is approached through the consideration of sleep-disturbing stimuli, day-dreams, and the suggested dreams of the hypnotic state. In order to reach the meaning of dreams, the manifest and latent dream content are differentiated, childhood dreams are dilated UpoIn, and the factors of the dream censor, symbolism, and the dream work discussed, from which the conclusion is reached that the infantile dream is the obvious fulfilment of an admitted wish; the distorted dream is the disguised fulfilment of a suppressed wish; and the anxiety dream is the obvious fulfilment of a suppressed wish. In the third section the general theory of the neuroses is admirably expounded. Through the study of the compulsion neurosis the unconsciolus is shown to exist, and it is demonstrated that not alone is the meaning of the symptoms invariably hidden in the unconscious, but that the very existence of the symptoms is conditioned by its relation to the unconscious. The other transference neuroses (anxiety hysteria, conversion hysteria) have their mechanisms explained in chapters on resistance and suppres- sion; the sexual life of man; development of the libido and sexual 304 group.bmj.com on December 19, 2016 - Published by http://jnnp.bmj.com/ Downloaded from