suffered of cramps as well as of repeated attacks of paralysis of her limbs; her bodily activities were at low ebb so that she complained of a disagreeable feeling of weakness, of inability to meet the issues of life. On the mental side she showed, besides, great irritability, very unstable temper, weakened will power and corresponding heightened suggestibility. Her moods changed frequently, she flew easily into rage if she could not have her way; a number of times she attempted suicide, though perhaps not very seriously. She had also passed through periods of confusion with partial or total amnesia. Higher ethical concepts were wanting in her, though she covered her shortcomings in this respect rather cleverly. Upon those close to her she made the impression of being an overgrown child, pampered and spoiled as are many of the women belonging to her social set who lack any serious aim in life. Those who knew her less intimately failed to notice anything out of the ordinary in her, so that she passed for a normal person. As is almost universally the case with such persons her sexual life was far from normal. She possessed a distinctly perverted sexual trait. The infantile character of her sexual longings and fancies, though perfectly clear, remained apparently unrecognized by the authors of the present study. Thus, for instance, they speak of her wailings over the death of her husband and parents as wilful exaggerations. It seems strange that the authors should have no explanation to offer for the woman's tenderness towards the dead beyond the flimsy and superficial remark that it is the product of her morbid phantasy and in keeping with her tendency to exaggerate.

The data concerning the man in the case are less thorough, but the authors have learned sufficiently about him to enable them to give a fairly comprehensive outline of his mental make-up. He was an army officer, well educated, a very efficient and energetic man and of high social standing. He, too, possessed certain psychopathic traits. The important point about the man, according to the authors, is that these traits burst forth with full force only upon his unhappy association with the woman. It required the psychopathic character of a woman like V. S. and intimate association with her to bring about V. G.'s downfall.

The trait in his character which furnished perhaps the strongest bond of union between the two was his passion for heroic display. He was vainglorious to a morbid degree, ready to rush, Don Quixote like, to the assistance of one in apparent or real distress, if by doing so he could figure as a daredevil. His military career, undoubtedly, and the traditions of military life have had something to do with the sharpening of his character just as the particular trait in question may have been what turned him, in

the first place, upon a military career. His sexual life was also steeped in the subnormal. He possesseed homosexual traits and was addicted to various perverse habits with the result that he brought himself into a state of psychic impotence. His tendency to exaggerations and particularly his marked cynicism were no doubt intimately related to his sexual abnormalities.

It was but logical that a man of daring type should appeal to the weak-willed character of Mme. V. S. The weak always admire the strong just as the hungry envy the well fed and smallsouled moral weaklings are loudest in the praises of virtue and honor. Moved at first by compassion for the woman's unfortunate situation within her family circle and later by jealousy, V. G. plots to obtain her freedom. In keeping with his erratic spirit and joy of adventure his plans, instead of revolving within the bounds of socially countenanced action, assume the wildest and most extreme forms. Robbers' masks, poisoning, shooting, all the deeds of romantic fancy figure in his plans. The woman nags him on with stories of suffering and distress until the desire to help her out of the situation becomes an obsession with him.

In contrast with his attitude the woman, weak of will, though nagging him on, is at the same time secretly taking measures to avoid serious conflict. Not only does she lack the will but at bottom she lacks even the wish to become free. The situation in its tense and strained form affords her immense gratification. She adds to her secret delight by intensifying the situation with new stories of maltreatment.

The particular point which the authors emphasize in this study is the fact that, in a certain sense, the two psychopathic characters figuring in this drama completed each other. Through the interaction of their traits they rounded out a type capable of committing a crime of which neither person alone would have been guilty, so that the crime may be said to have been committed by a sort of composite personality. But the interdependence of character and traits not only among psychopaths but throughout social life is universally recognized; the fact itself is too common to require additional documentation, so that this feature is not the most important, and certainly not the only one that should have been sought out in connection with such interesting data. Whenever two persons are thrown together it is fatal that they should react upon and influence each other. So thoroughly is this fact acknowledged that the mutual influence of psychopathic and other types, for good or bad, forms the perennial theme exploited in every form

of literature and figures in every dramatic plot from the serious "problem" play to the one act melodrama. With the data that the authors have had the opportunity to obtain from their subjects who were intelligent enough and also willing to give a complete account of their inner experiences, a psychogenetic analysis of the earliest character-forming experiences of childhood would have been possible. Not only would have such a study proven well worth while, but incidentally it would have furnished definite means of ascertaining just what importance may be justly ascribed to the mutual influence of the psychopathic characters under consideration. One of the most important contributions of psychoanalytical research is the evidence it brings forward showing that the fundamental traits of our character are formed in infancy and early childhood; these traits may be brought into bold relief in their blunt form or may be sublimated into ethically higher forms, but they are not moulded anew by the accidental meeting of some person or other in adult life.

APROPOS OF THE

J. S. VAN TESLAAR.

DOCTRINE OF

RESERVE ENERGY. By

Tom A. Williams, M.B., C. M., Edin. Presented to the Southern Society of Psychology and American Association for Advance of Science at Washington, December, 1911.

Using the conception of the subconscious as applying to a special series of nerve processes, energizing independently of those which are the bases of the thoughts of everyday life, a psychological theory has arisen that these subconscious processes constitute energies which may be regarded as a reserve (James) susceptible of being utilized by means of special associationizing processes. On this basis a therapeutic method is employed. (Sidis.)

This theory depends upon the postulate that the threshold of excitation is somewhat inversely proportionate to the richness in associations of the constellation to be excited. This postulate regards the inhibition of energy as synonymous with its storage, forgetting that inhibition itself is a greedy consumer of energy. So that the absence of manifestation of energy, to a superficial examination at least, does not connote its storage or reserve on these grounds at least.

Nor is the fact that useful work is not done by any means an index that energy is not expended; for a very little observation

shows that it is extended in fatuities and sterile activities. (Author's Precocity, Ped. Sem. 1911.)

So that the principle of channeling energy would be more correctly substituted for the principle of reserve energy. The result of what is called training, that is, technical methods clearly show this difference. (Human Engineering.) The trained man may spend less energy than the untrained man, but his work is more effective in result because more wisely expended.

AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT.

REVIEWS

LAUGHTER: AN ESSAY ON THE MEANING OF THE COMIC.

H.

Bergson. Translated by V. Brereton and F. Rothwell. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1911, pp. vi, 200.

Those familiar with Bergson's philosophy know what emphasis this thinker lays upon the elasticity, the uniqueness, and irreversibility of all modes of human life. Any action that tends away from the wonted elasticity towards the reversible, the stereotyped, or mechanical is recognized instinctively as untrue to life and provokes laughter. The comical, then, consists of the splitting into parts, its fundamental theme is the tendency to a mechanization of what should appear only as an evolving continuum.

Laughter is a social instrument for the correction of all tendencies towards the inelastic, the stereotyped, or the mechanical in human life. As such laughter implies a certain amount of indifference. At any rate the comical, the object of laughter, lies outside the sphere of one's direct interest or concern. Anything that relates directly to our struggle for existence cannot very well serve us at the same time as the object of derisive correction. We can ill afford to laugh at a joke at our expense. If our emotions. participate strongly in a certain act, if we are particularly interested in our neighbors, we are rendered thereby unable to appreciate the comical in them. The ideal condition of the comical is one of aloofness: the attitude that favors it best is that of simple curiosity not weighted down by any self-interest. It is only in such an attitude that laughter exercises fully its corrective influence.

Comedy revolves around the similar and the typical. It is therefore unlike art, which aims to "bring us face to face with reality itself," and also unlike reality or life, which is a struggle away from the mechanical; it occupies a sphere of its own between true life and the artistic representation thereof.

These are, in brief, the principles on which Bergson explains the meaning of laughter and of the comic. Conceived as they are in charming language of unsurpassed poetic beauty, it is little wonder that within the dozen years or so that the work has been before the public it has reached numerous editions in France and other countries. The author's analysis of art, contained in this work, though incidental to its main theme, has become justly celebrated and is looked upon by some as containing some of the happiest thoughts which have been penned on this subject.