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A new viewpoint will be given to many readers by this monograph. In it psychiatry is found looking toward physiology for help, but modestly suggesting that it has knowledge of its own to give in return.
The first part of the book is given over to establishing a great reflex arc with the whole autonomic apparatus as its afferent arm and the cerebrospinal nervous system as a proficient arm. Experimental work (Cannon) has shown gastric contractions are concomitant with hunger pangs. Using this and other physiologic facts (Sherrington, Crile) as a basis, the author claims that emotion comes into existence only as peripheral autonomic reactions become aroused. Cannon's statement that hunger "may take imperious control of human actions" is given as the key to the dynamic functions of the personality, taking for granted that all autonomic cravings have the same physiologic function as hunger. The efferent side of the great