Abstract
THIS costly little work is written to ventilate a grievance. It would appear that certain authorities on mental diseases, including Krapelin and Bins-wanger, employ in their works such terms as association, apperception, power of imagination, anger, and the like. These, according to our author, are metaphysical terms, and must be carefully excluded from Psychiatrie, which is a purely natural science. New sciences spring up like mushrooms nowadays, and it is a misfortune that those who specialise in one, or seek to exploit it, so rarely know with precision what is being done in others, even when these are most closely akin to their own darling pursuit. We fear that this writer hardly understands that the terms which he criticises are used every day in psychology with a minimum of metaphysical reference, and that he is almost bound, before he proceeds a step, to show due cause why the terminology of Psychiatrie should differ seriously from that accepted by ordinary psychology. In spite of his parade of footnotes and his references to such grand conceptions as that of Allbeseeltheit, it may be doubted if this writer is competent to discuss so general a question. At any rate, his present work does not impress one as being well arranged, clear, or convincing.
Metaphysik in der Psychiatrie.
By Dr. P. Kronthal. Pp. 92. (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1905.) Price 2.50 marks.
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Metaphysik in der Psychiatrie . Nature 72, 29 (1905). https://doi.org/10.1038/072029a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/072029a0