egory that they are enamored of appearing in the guise of superiority, so they incline to everything contrary to what others do; they flee from love, for fear of what it might drag them into against their will of submission and obedience. They live in an atmosphere of emo-tional repression, taking care not to disclose to anyone the hidden contents of their souls so far as they can help it; and so their ties with people remain shrouded in obscurity and doubt.

It becomes clear to us from what the author says that the cases of nervous aberration which beset the people of this age are as com-plicated as the life we live; and the more numerous the causes apt to bear down upon a man and upset his natural nervous order, the more numerous the incidental happenings, and the more numer-ous the cases of aberration of which we are speaking.

And when the author comes to speak of how one may be rid of these aberrant nervous states, she says: “The cure of these symptoms does not rest upon a conscious mental resolve, nor upon exerting the sufferer's will in a given direction; there is but one way, and no second to it, and that is the removal of the primary causes that led to these states,

and the erasing of their trace from the sufferer's personality.

“And it is not enough that a person concede and acknowledge the existence of these aberrant symptoms in his behavior and in his thinking; the important thing is that he cooperate with the physician in working to bring about a revolution in the very heart of his personality, resting on a special psychological regimen...” “And it is a mistake to think,” says the author, “that cure of these nervous symptoms comes only by way of psycho-logical treatment; for often the sufferer is cured naturally, as a result of following the example of some great human model, or of his direct contact with a group of sincere people, or of his under-going a common catastrophe that joins him to a company of the stricken like himself... Natural contingencies such as these are apt to remove the principal causes that produced this aberration, and consequently to erase its symp-toms completely; and the sufferer returns happy, sound of nerve.”

And the author concludes by saying: the soundness of our nerves is measured by the social immunity we possess; the sounder and better balanced our relations with people, the further we are from falling prey to these

diseases. The world community is large and wide, and it is not within the power of any one of us to live a natural life without deal-ing with the various classes and kinds of people; so it behooves this human being to take care that his social ties be built upon love and understanding, not upon deviation and extremism.

Karen Horney's book “Our Inner Conflicts” is a profound psychological study in one of the sciences newly arisen in this age, and it is counted in the front rank of the scientific works that have treated this subject in the light of psychoanalysis and scientific experiment. It is, moreover, the fruit of a long struggle in which the author sought to uncover the causes of the obscurity and the nervous aberration that is well-nigh one of the potent phe-nomena of the twentieth century.

I do not say that the book is easy and smooth in style, for it was not written for the general public, nor for innocent amusement, but for the cultivated class that cares to be acquainted with every new development in the sciences; and the reading of it throws light on much that is obscure in the understanding of people's natures and the causes of their aberrant conduct and their deviant behavior.