New York Times
UNCONSCIOUS PSYCHOLOGY
THE UNCONSCIOUS: A symposium. Edited and introduced by Ethel S. Dummer. 265 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50.
Students of psychology will find this symposium by nine scientific authorities clarifying discussion of some of its important problems that have special consequence for human society. The nine papers composing the volume were read at a club meeting in Chicago last Spring under the auspices of the Illinois Society for Mental Hygiene. The general tendency of the papers is to inquire into the possibility of discovering in the "unconscious" realm of man’s mind the normal process of activity that results in imaginative or intuitive intellectual action as distinct from the pathological activities that have had so much attention from Freud, Healy and other, and the possibility of learning "consciously to utilize this integrative action of the unconscious." The conference was organized for the special purpose of discussing the "synthetic tendencies in the unconscious" from varied scientific angels and therefore those invited to present papers were specialist representing the latest and most authoritative developments in biology, psychology, psychiatry, sociology and anthropology. Each one discussed the problem in its relation to his own specialty.
Those taking part in the conference were: Professor C. M. Child of the University of Chicago, where he has held for many years the chair of biology, whose paper bore the title "The Beginnings of Unity and Order in Living Things:; Kurt Koffka of the University of Giessen, who spoke on "The Structure of the Unconscious"; John E. Anderson of the Institute of Child Welfare in the University of Minnesota, whose theme was "The Genesis of Social Relations in the Young Child"; John B. Watson of the New School for Social Research, especially known for his advocacy of the Behaviorist School of Psychologists, who read a paper on "The Unconscious of the Behaviorist"; Edward Sapir of the University of Chicago, whose subject was "The Unconscious Patterning of Behavior in Society": W. I. Thomas, sociologist, of the New School for Social Research, who talked on "The Configuration of Personality": Marion E. Kenworthy of the New York School for Social Work, whose theme was "The Pre-Natal and Post-Natal Phenomena of Consciousness": F. L. Wells, a psychologist specializing in psychopathology and psychiatry and chief of the psychological laboratory of Boston Psychopathic Hospital, whose adderss was on "Values in Social Psychology."
