William Halse Rivers Rivers

Instinct and the Unconscious William Halse Rivers Rivers

Dr. Rivers has in this work done us a real service, therefore, in providing a new method for approaching the study of mental development. His thesis is that the story of our mental evolution is to be traced in the organization of the human nervous system and that it is a story of progress from crude undiscriminating sensitivity coupled with excess of feeling and blind ungraduated reaction to greater and still greater delicacy of sense discrimination and an adequately proportioned measure of feeling and response. The book itself is a masterly piece of work which no student of human nature can afford to ignore. Especially valuable are Dr. Rivers' attempts to define his terms which lead in nearly every chapter to a through examination of psychological first principle. There will be disagreement with many of Dr. Rivers' definitions and views, but none can fail to recognize that they represent clear thinking and precise knowledge. Many modern books depend for their success upon the brilliant marshaling of new illustrations to prove old points of importance; but here we have old illustrations aptly used to prove recognized new points of possibly even greater importance. The book is essentially an original piece of thinking, destined to excite that useful kind of controversy in which new advance in science usually begins. - Frank Watts, The Monist, Vol. 32, No. 2 (April, 1922), p. 316