Review

Author(s): Read Bain

Review by: Read Bain
Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Jun., 1937), pp. 439-441
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2084887
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 BOOK REVIEWS 439
correction for attenuation, are presented as evidence that the indexes do
not duplicate each other unduly. The scale correlates with the Sims score
card at .94. Further evidence of validity is its unusually clean-cut differenti-
ation between extreme groups, in that there was not one case of overlap
between the day laboring and professional classes on five of the six indexes.
Finally the author suggests for further study the change of these cul-
tural items in time and with place and their true distribution curves in the
population.
Whereverhome visiting is feasible this scale should becomethe standard. It
greatly improves the completeness as well as the accuracy with which ques-
tions of status and of a child's home can be answered. Its sponsoring by
John E. Anderson in a foreword, with assistance rendered by F. L. Good-
enough and F. S. Chapin, gives assurance of competent scale construction.
With it as a basis, an interlocked or comparable form for rural homes,
transcending the present limits of U. S. whites, should be undertaken by
other students. Such much-needed cumulative research in sociology be-
comes possible when the sound basis which this scale provides has been
achieved.
STUART C. DODD
American University of Beirut, Syria
A
Truth and Reality: Life History of the Human Will. By OTTO RANK
Tr. byjessieTaft. AlfredA. Knopf,NewYork, I936. PP. xi+I93. $2.00.
Will Therapy: A4n .Analysis of the Therapeutic Process in Terms of Rela-
tionship. Tr. and Introduction by Jessie Taft. Alfred A. Knopf, New
York, I936. Pp. xxv+292. $2.50.
If the author were not a man of Rank's rank, most readers oriented
toward natural science probably would say "Words, words, words-loose,
confused, and metaphysical!" The more I read the psychoanalytic dis-
senters, the more I am impressed by the relative sanity, serenity, and
scientific attitude of Freud. His latest volume has a clarity, reasonableness,
and scientific temper his younger critics might well emulate.
Both books spend much space trying to show both the therapeutic and
theoretic inadequacy of Freud's system. Rank says his therapy developed
as he discovered the therapeutic shortcomings of Freud. His theory then
grew out of his successful therapy. Freud says substantially the same thing
about his own system. Both statements may be true. Rank offers no evi-
dence, however, that his therapy cures a larger percentage of the cases
accepted or is applicable to a wider range of neuroses than Freudian ther-
apy. Even if both were true, it would not prove the soundness of his criti-
cisms of Freudian theory any more than Freudian therapy proves the va-
lidity of Freudian theory. Neuroses can be cured by psychoanalysis, Mrs.
Eddy, Lourdes, New Thought, matrimony, divorce, surgery, medicine,
employment, peace, and the passage of time, but there is serious reason
for doubting the validity of most if not all theories commonly advanced
to "explain" the cures.

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440 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
The theories of Rank and Freud cannot both be true and both may be,
and probably are, at least partly false. This also goes for Jung, Adler, and
all the rest. To me, Freudian theory seems more comprehensive and there-
fore more satisfactory than any of the others which, as Freud says, are
constructed largely by taking a particular aspect of his theory and develop-
ing it to the exclusion of other aspects which, for some probably psycho-
analytic reason, the dissenter wishes to escape by ignoring. This auto-
matically gives the dissenter a following among those who also cannot bear
infantile sexuality, psychological monistic determinism, the unconscious,
symbolism, or whatever offends the resisting dissenter.
Dr. Taft says in her able introduction to Will Therapy that Rank's con-
tribution consists of three new tools: (i) The use of the analytic situation as
present experience rather than a re-living of the past; (2) the recognition
of transference as not sexual, but as a re-establishment of the mother-tie;
and (3) end-setting as a therapeutic control of the entire analysis. Rank
says the only sound technique is having no technique; that the primary
purpose should be to cure the patient as completely and quickly as possible.
With this everyone must agree, but it is also evident that Rank soon de-
velops a very vague (to me) philosophical theory to account for the neuro-
sis, and hence to justify his techniqueless technique. He blames Freud for
making the Id equivalent to God and sexuality to the devil, but his will-
guilt theory is erected into the same kind of dualistic universal. The neurot-
ic is conceived as one who has a powerful will which he denies with conse-
quent guilt-feeling. Therapy consists of helping him to will without guilt.
This reification of will leads to some curious paradoxes, among which
may be mentioned the idea that reality is really illusion and self-deception
"with the truth one cannot live"-to live one must have illusions; what
is wrong with the neurotic is that he is much nearer to "actual truth"
(sic) than others are; the neurotic suffers from too strong will which he
must deny, rationalize, project, and break by his neurosis; he is really more
creative than the average man; illness is necessary and wholesome-it is
one of the ways by which we "pay for our guilt feelings"; the neurotic is
a miscarried artist; Nietzsche was the first, and till now (Rank?!) the only
true psychologist; Freud is moralistic and religious; and so on.
Reality, truth, guilt, will, creative, guilt-in-itself, will-in-itself, separa-
tion, and many other terms are used by Rank with such connotations that
one feels he (or Rank) should learn the language over. His use of will
seems more mystical and ill-defined than the Freudian terms he criticizes.
One may disagree with Freud, but we usually feel that we and he both
know what he means. I have the opposite feeling when trying to read
Rank. Will is a black hat from which Rank pulls his rabbits with a seeming
intention to make Freud writhe with envy or anger. One of his chief criti-
cisms of Freud is his natural-science ideology. Apparently Rank regards
his own rejection of the methods and point of view of natural science as one
of his chief claims to fame.
Once I went to a funeral with a wise old lady. As we left she said, "I

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 BOOK REVIEWS 44I

always marvel that these preachers know so much about everything and
are so sure of it." The dissenters from Freud almost all speak with much
greater authority than their ex-master. The ex-apostle Rank is certainly
not the least of these. He not only knows all about what is wrong with
Freud, but also what is wrong with the rest of us, to wit: we can't will
without feeling guilty. This is because we were born, weaned and have to
will (living is willing); this always means separation, which produces guilt
feeling. So I feel guilty at the necessary separation from this review-so
much unsaid.
And someone should feel "No-Index Guilt" for both books.
READ BAIN
Miami University

Landlord and Tenant on the CottonPlantation. By T. J. WOOFTER, JR., et al.

Research Monograph V. Washington: Works Progress Administration
I936. Pp. xxxiii+288.
This monograph is the most important comprehensive study of the
southern plantation since C. 0. Brannen's classical study, "Relation of
Land Tenure to Plantation Organization," United States Department of
Agriculture, Bulletin No. 1269, I924. Woofter and his associates (Black-
well, Hoffsommer, Maddox, Massell, Williams, and Wynne) have pro-
duced a basic study, despite the innumerable annoyances, uncertainties,
pressures, and other handicaps under which researchers in the "Emer-
gency" agencies work.
Ambitious both in scope and method, the project correctly visualizes
the basic social problem in the rural South and "focuses attention upon the
plantation as a unit...... "Crews of field workers gathered the data through
personal interviews. A total of 646 plantations in six States (Alabama, Ar-
kansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and North Carolina) were visited
and studied. These plantations were selected by a sampling process de-
signed to represent "homogeneous areas of the Cotton Belt," rather than
the States. On the plantations enumerated resided a total of 9,404 families,
other than those of the landlords. By definition plantations were limited to
those operating units employing five or more families.
Prefaced by an Introduction and Summary, the body of the report is
divided into eleven chapters. The first four of these, "Plantation Areas and
Tenant Classes," "Ownership," "Plantation Organization and Manage-
ment," and "The One-Crop System," constitute a concise resume setting
forth the general nature of the plantation, the fundamental importance in
the South of this institution, and its distribution in the Southern Region.
Woofter's plantation tenant is the share-cropper and "share-tenant," both
of whom are subject to rigid supervision by the plantation operator. The
''managing share tenant," and other tenants having an independent status
are styled "renters," a term having the same general meaning that "ten-
ant" has outside of the South.

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