Psychoanalysis and Moral Values

limit of this book (1 January 1955) and the end of 1957 are included in special sections interspersed at relevant points in the text, and the results of more recent investigations are noted in footnotes. Following all of the systematic accounts an index of substrata is provided listing plants, animals, and organic substances together with the phyco-myceteous fungi associated with them. A bibliography with more than 1,200 listings and a general index conclude this work. Dr. Sparrow's volume is a major achievement which will long benefit those concerned with aquatic biology. This is an expanded version of a lecture which was part of the Freud Anniversary Series in 1959. Its simply descriptive title should not lead to any conclusion that this is a "popularized" treatment of an immense area. Those previously familiar with Dr. Hartmann's contributions to psychoanalysis know that very little which flows from his pen is banal. This work is wholly concordant with his persistent attempts to refine the conceptions and boundaries of psychoanalytic theory. His past successful endeavors in this regard have won him a high place in the roster of psychoanalytic theorists and solid esteem for the fertility of his mind. In the opening sentence he warns that he is about to cover a variety of partly heterogeneous subjects, which is indeed the case. But the profundity of his grasp of the topics results in a synthesis which is impressive, informative, and stimulating. Hartmann has never been easy to read, but it is pleasant to report that this essay is considerably more lucid than some of his earlier publications. This is a particularly fortunate attribute here because undoubtedly it will have-and should have-a wider circulation than his metapsychological writings. During the first part, and repeatedly from different directions throughout , the point is established that psychoanalysis cannot and does not provide a philosophy of life nor, any more than any scientific enterprise, can it decide which values should be supreme. This remains true despite the efforts of some to "evangelize" or "substantiate" a moral system with psychoanalytic data. In the positive sense he painstakingly elaborates what can be and is the contribution of psychoanalysis to problems of morals. Briefly stated, he proposes that psychoanalysis can provide a systematic psychology of moral aims and imperatives: "We can judge their psychological implications. We can form a scientific opinion on what strivings they will or will not gratify, on …