Publisher's Synopsis
An excerpt from the Preface.THE new psychology of the unconscious, associated chiefly with the work of Freud, has suffered the fate of many new movements of thought. On the one hand it has raised a loud outcry on the part of some of those, not always well-informed, to whom its doctrines seem incredibly strange and unpleasant. On the other hand, it has been pushed to an extreme by some of its supporters, and its suppositions have been asserted as though they were proved facts; sweeping generalisations have been made prematurely, for example, in reference to the influence f sex on mental life. In this book, which has grown from lectures on the psychology of the unconscious, delivered (1918-1920) before the Socratic Society at Birmingham University, the Education Society of the University of Leeds, and elsewhere, I have tried to give as clear an exposition as is possible, in a short space, of such a complex matter as the " new psychology," and to indicate what is fairly well-established and what is still speculative theory or hasty generalisation. I have also particularly tried to bring the main doctrines into line with " orthodox " psychology, and to show how they may be regarded as unfamiliar examples of recognised fundamental laws of the mind; that, indeed, so far as the new psychology can be counted true, it is not entirely "new." In this way I hope to make the new psychology, so far as it seems valid, more comprehensible to the student of orthodox psychology, and to lessen the objection to it based merely upon mistaken a priori rounds. For it should be judged upon evidence, and not upon misconceptions as to its inconsistency with a generally accepted psychology...
