gg BOOK REVIEWS
Charles Baudouin, Professor of the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute, Geneva. (Allen & Unwin, London. 1920. Pp. 288. Price los. 6d.)
This much-advertised book is certainly written in a lively and interest- ing fashion, but so far as we can see that is its chief merit. The author gives an account of Coup's psychotherapeutic work and views, illustrated from his own experience and quickened here and there by an elementary knowledge of psycho-analysis. We cannot find that Cou^ has added anytiiing of value to what was long known about suggestion and auto- suggestion, nor anything at all in fact beyond a few questionable novel formulations. The French passion for simplistic certitude, which so often creates the illusion of lucidity, is well seen in the so-called 'law' that 'the force of the imagination is in direct ratio to the square of the will', or in the 'formula of suggestibility':
fi X f2 X fa X fo
s=.
s
How can readers with any scientific discipline be expected to take
such a work seriously? It seems to us that Cou6 has merely exploited
the partial oblivion into which the subject of suggestion has fallen of
late years and revived our ancient knowledge of it as a new discovery.
The translation, by Eden and Cedar Paul, is well done, like all their translation work, but in the Glossary we note two points calling for comment. The 'preconscious' is said to be 'usually spoken of by psychoanalysts as the "foreconscious"'; we do not think that the latter word wiirbe found in the writings of any English psycho-analyst Then the 'subconscious' is said to be 'usually spoken of by psychoanalysts as the " unconscious " '. This is obviously untrue, for by the ' unconscious ' we mean something totally different from the 'subconscious' and the two terms are in no sense interchangeable. ■ J-
He
Au viEiL EvANGiLE PAR ON CHEMiN NOUVEAU. La psychanalyse au service
de la cure d'ame. Par O. Pfister. Traduit par H. Malan. (E. BLrcher,
Berne, 1920.)
Ce petit volume de 91 pages s'adresse aux pasteurs dont le v6ritabre ministfere est la cure d'Ame. L'auteur s'applique k leur faire entrevoir, k I'aide de quelques exemples, I'espoir qu'ils peuvent fonder sur la psychanalyse. Ces exemples n'ont pas la pretention d'initier les lecteurs k la pratique de la psychanalyse; ils illustrent remarquablement Tadjuvant precieux qu'est la psychanalyse pour le pasteur des ftmes qui voit vemr k soi, au cours de sa carrifere, tant d'anxieux, d'inhibtSs, de scrupuleux, d'obs^d^s, de non satisfaits d'eux-mfemes ni des autres et qui menacent de verser dans le sectarisme, ou dans I'asc^tisme.
