"Awaken in early childhood the critical spirit of man; awaken early in the child's life, love of knowledge, love of truth, of art and literature for their own sake, and you arouse man's genius."

"The cultivation of the power of habit-disintegration is what constitutes the proper education of man's genius." He insists that we should cultivate variability, for this permits one to have recourse to the potential, hidden, stored-up, dormant, unused, subconscious, reserve energies latent in all of us.

His suggestion is as follows: Excepting the children backward in development because of congenital or some overlooked pathological condition perhaps easily remedied by proper treatment, Sidis insists that in the large majority of children the beginning of education should be between the second and third years of life, and from the very beginning the child's energies and interests should be directed to intellectual activity and love of knowledge rather than the usual nursery games and physical exercises. Our schools and colleges are training their students in the art of moneygetting and the like rather than stirring up in them a real love for knowledge.

"We do not appreciate the genius harbored in the average child, and let it lie fallow."

That we have up to date only scratched the surface of man's possibilities, and scratched it too often in the wrong place, no one who has seriously reflected upon this can deny. Hence we must whole-heartedly agree with Sidis when he asserts: "We can develop into a great race by the proper education of man's genius."

Every psychopathologist, psychiatrist and educator must agree when the author warns us to guard the child against all evil fears, superstitions, prejudices, and credulity, in order to prevent nervous and mental diseases and their allies.

So convinced is Sidis that the control of mental and moral life should be in the hands of the medical psychopathologist that he ventures to predict that the medical man will in the future assume the supervision of the education of the nation.

In the appendix, he calls attention, among other points, to the groundlessness of the fear of the results of the application of the method he advocates, for it shows that we are but afraid of genius, "especially when it is manifested as 'precocity in childhood."

Throughout the volume Sidis writes with terrific force and power, and his intensity, his sincerity, and his whole-souled devotion to the cause to which he has given himself in this book shines through on every page.

Here, too, as elsewhere, he shows a clarity of thinking, a directness and unerring aim in expression, and a keen understanding of that which he has undertaken to discuss.

I heartily and earnestly recommend the work to the readers of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.

MEYER SOLOMON.

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MENTAL ADJUSTMENTS. By Frederic Lyman Wells. D. Appleton & Co. Pp. XIII plus 331. $2.50 net.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO PSYCHO-ANALYSIS.

By Dr. S. Ferenczi.

Translated by Dr. Ernest Jones. R. G. Badger. Pp. 288. $3.00.

SEX WORSHIP AND SYMBOLISM OF PRIMITIVE RACES.

ger Brown II. R. G. Badger. Pp. 145. $3.00.

A POINT SCALE FOR MEASURING MENTAL ABILITY.

By San

By Robert M. Yerkes, James W. Bridges, Rose S. Hardwick. Warwick & York. Pp. 218. $1.25.

THE ANIMAL MIND. By Margaret Floy Washburn. The Macmillan Co. Pp. XII plus 386. $1.90.

THE MASTERY OF NERVOUSNESS. By Robert S. Carroll. The Macmillan Co. Pp. 346. $2.00.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHYSIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF

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SCIENCE AND LEARNING IN FRANCE. An Appreciation by American Scholars. Northwestern University Press. Pp. XXXVIII plus 453.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE LEARNING PROCESS IN THE SNAIL, PHYSA GYRINA SAY. By Elizabeth Lockwood Thompson. Behavior Monograph Series. Henry Holt & Co. Pp. III plus 97. $1.25.

THE EFFECT of length of BLIND ALLEYS ON MAZE LEARNING・

An Experiment on Twenty-Four White Rats. By Joseph Peterson Behavior Monograph Series. Henry Holt & Co. Pp. III plus 53

75c.

T

BY MORTON PRINCE

HE phenomena which I am about to describe are important because, if the evidence upon which they depend is accepted as veridical, they afford direct evidence of specific subconscious processes occurring under certain conditions. Even the most ardent of clinical psychologists must admit that the subconscious. processes which they postulate to explain their clinical phenomena are based on indirect or circumstantial evidence; that is to say, the postulate of a subconscious process is inferred from the behavior of the phenomena and the logical relation which appears to exist between them and certain antecedent experiences, that give justifiable grounds for the inference of a causal relationship. This causal relation requires the assumption of a subconscious process acting as an intermediary between the conserved antecedent experience and the present observed phenomena. In other words, all takes place as if there were this subconscious process.

Now, for the subconscious phenomena about to be described the evidence is direct. I have said that the acceptation of the phenomena depends upon the acceptation of the evidence as trustworthy. If this be not accepted, the phenomena are valueless. The evidence is that of memory

Presented at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Psychopathological Association, Boston, May 24, 1917.

Copyright 1918, by Richard G. Badger. All Rights Reserved.

derived from introspection. It is the same kind of evidence that must necessarily be used and accepted in all psychological investigations into the content of consciousness. It would seem that if this kind of evidence is accepted, as it is, in one class of psychological investigations, there is no justification in refusing it in another. But of course in every investigation employing this method, everything depends upon the accuracy of the powers of introspection and trustworthiness of the subject. I have observed these phenomena in three cases only-two of my own and one of Dr. Waterman's, who kindly permitted me to observe his case with him. My own two cases were studied over a long period of time, and therefore I had an opportunity to weigh carefully the introspective capacity of the subjects, their introspective memories, and their trustworthiness. I have not the slightest doubt regarding any of these points. Dr. Waterman has the same confidence. Furthermore, my own cases have been submitted to quite a number of well-known competent observers, and no one has expressed the slightest doubt regarding their veridical nature.

Regarding the significance and interpretation of the phenomena I am not prepared to express definite conclusions. They permit, however, of provisional theories which I will offer in the proper place.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PHENOMENA

The phenomena consist of coconscious "pictures," for the most part visualizations, sometimes auditory "perceptions," which occur outside the field of awareness. I say "coconscious" and "outside the field of awareness" because the subjects in their normal waking state are entirely unaware of them. By no effort of mental concentration or introspection can they possibly bring back memories of such pictures ever having entered the field of consciousness, nor are they aware of them at the moment of occurrence. There is no immediate awareness of them, and it is only by retrospection under the conditions of certain methods of investigation that memories of these coconscious pictures can be recovered.

The method employed was that of retrospection in hypnosis. When the subjects were hypnotized and thereby put into a condition where, as so commonly happens, the capacity for synthesization is enhanced, memories of coconscious phenomena which it was claimed had never entered the field of awareness were obtained. These memories were very precise, definite and realistic. There never was any doubt about them as memories, nor any doubt about them as previous realities, that is to say, real psychical occurrences. They were always described as vivid pictures (or auditory sounds, music, etc.) varying in character from a single picture, as of a face or other object, to a succession of pictures, like motion-pictures representing the action of a scene. They were in other words similar to the visualizations (belonging to perceptions) which occur normally in the course of conscious thought, as when one thinks of a person or place or scene, only they were more vivid and when cinematographic more complex, and did not appear within the conscious content of awareness. Furthermore, these visualizations or pictures were not integral elements of the conscious stream of thought (perceptions), but in their content pertained to matter of which the subject was not consciously thinking at the moment. The matter generally, if not always, was related to antecedent mental experiences (thoughts) with or without secondary elaboration.

The conditions under which these phenomena were observed were various; for instance, they occurred regularly during the course of suggested post-hypnotic acts, often as post-dream phenomena, and as phenomena of repressed thoughts, etc. They will be classified later after I have given a few examples in order that their nature may be more clearly understood at the outset. For this purpose I will take a type occurring, perhaps, under the simplest conditions, namely, suggested post-hypnotic phenomena.

1. POST-HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA

Observation 1: The suggestion was given to the subject in hypnosis that after waking, on the entrance of Dr. Waterman into the room, she was to go to the bookcase, take down