Abstract
DR. KAEJN STEPHEN bases her book upon a series of eight lectures which she delivered mostly to medical students at Cambridge. She has an exceptionally good grasp of her subject, and adopts as the basic idea of her book the hypothesis that neurotic symptoms are defences designed to pre vent anxiety from developing when repression threatens to give way. Dr. Stephen is an out-and-out Freudian, but there are many who will find fault with her statement “... if we can argue by analogy from the neuroses to the other group of psychogenic illnesses, the psychoses (insanity) …” It is surely doubtful if any psychosis can be looked on as purely psychogenic in origin. The causation of the psychoses is a very complicated and debat able subject, and although psychoanalysis can offer explanations of mechanisms its theories of causa tion are not so easily applied or accepted by those best qualified to assess their value in an impartial manner.
Psychoanalysis and Medicine: a Study of the Wish to Fall III.
By Karin Stephen. Pp. vi + 238. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1933.) 8s. 6d. net.
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[Short Reviews]. Nature 133, 374 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133374a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133374a0