BOOK REVIEWS 29 1

This reticence has a special significance; it betokens the continued remoteness of

a genuine rapprochement between the social and behavioral sciences, on the one
hand, and history on the other. Nevertheless, even timorous and inhibited works
like Bushman’s represent a welcome step in that direction.
Bushman’s study is an investigation of socio-cultural change in colonial Con-
necticut between 1690 and 1765. The dynamics with which it is concerned constitute,
in RIacIver’s terms, a shift from a corporate to a competitive society; in Tonnies’
terms, a transition characterized by a diminution of Gemeinschaft and a growth of
Gesellschaft. According to Bushman, the impetus that produced this transmutation
had a twofold origin. It arose out of an expanding economy that generated a
powerful acquisitive drive and out of the Great Awakening, “a psychological
earthquake” that removed the burden of guilt borne by all who had aggressively
sought wealth and who had clashed with authority as a result of having done so.
While explaining the impact of these twin forces on the institutions and values
of the society of Puritan Connecticut and on the characterological structure of its
members, Bushman carefully anatomizes the manifold strains that developed.
His analysis explores such economic tensions as those between the proprietors of
land and newcomers who were landless, townsmen and outlivers, recent settlements
and old ones, neophyte traders and long-established merchants, the eastern region
and the western. Moreover, it treats religious tensions, like those between the
Congregational Church and the dissenters, the advocates of order and the apostles
of piety, the upholders of rationalistic preaching and the supporters of pulpit
emotionalism, the New Lights and the Old Lights.
As Bushman sees it, the cumulative effect of these strains and their political
concomitants was the disintegration of the old social order. He deftly analyzes
both this gradual process and the seismic culmination: the Great Awakening and
its aftermath. His analysis concludes with a discerning scrutiny of the new society
that emerged from the residues of the traditional order. He sees that new society
as characterized by a looser cohesion, a greater ideological pluralism, and a relatively
permissive set of values. Among its salient attributes, according to Bushman,
were an increasing acceptance of the pursuit of self-interest, a stronger insistence
on a broad ambit of personal liberty, and a growing belief in the legitimacy of
resistance to overweening authority.
The origirialit,y of Bushman’s study is as impressive as its thoroughness. It
endows with freshness and new meaning material that, for the most part, has been
worn threadbare by generations of Americanistq. Bushman’s success in making it
do so is a remarkable demonstration of what a historian well grounded in sociology
and psychology can achieve.
HECHT
J. JEAN
Columbia [Jniversity

GASTONVANDENDRIESSCHE. The Parapraxis I n the Haizmann Case of Sigmund

Freud, Louvain: Editions Nauwelaerts S.P.R.L., 1965, 192 pp.
This is a detailed re-examination of the Haizmann case (the demonological
illness of the seventeenth century painter, Christopher Haizmann) with particular
attention to the alleged parapraxis in the case and its explanations by Sigmund
Freud and by Rlacalpine arid Hunter. The Trophy of Mariazell, the case’s most
292 BOOK REVIEWS

important source of material, contains contradictory dates and confusing infor-

mation; further, certain features of Haizmann’s psychosis invite speculation.
Freud dealt with both in his 1923 “Eine Teufels Neurose” paper. Macalpine and
Hunter, who themselves have been re-examining and attempting to set straight
Freud’s explanations of psychosis, edited and discussed the Haizmann material
in 1954 and 1956. In essence, Vandendriessche’s minute reconstruction throws
into question the psycho-analytic explanation as well as the more recent British
view.
1n.trying to fit the details of the case into limited formulas, Freudian homo-
sexual conflict or Macalpine and Hunter’s procreation theory (which these workers
have also’ opposed to Freud’s Schreber discussion) the facts must be distorted-
this is the heart of Vandendriessche’s claim. Instead he describes aspects of the
demonically possessed printer’s fantasies : their content of blood and violence,
a tendency of the material to polarize around extremes, of goodness and evil, strength
and weakness, greatness and depravity; and the consistent, involved, and specific
associations that mark psychotic outpourings however seemingly confused.
Vandendriessche does not explain these aspects of psychotic fantasy. He
avoids any theorizing of his own with as much care as he gives to correcting Freud’s
and Macalpine’s and Hunter’s. The modern reader will be able to say, however,
yes, he is right; the single fantasy-conflict conceptions of the earlier authors are
too limited; psychosis brings to the surface of mental life many buried elements of
wish and memory. These bear the marks of their primitive, visceral, largely un-
conscious origins, including the features Vandendriessche emphasizes. Psycho-
analysts refer to these as narcissistic or pre-genital; neurologists will locate their
seat of action in the old-brain. The two or three fantasy conflicts emphasized by
the earlier workers are now seen as part of the large scale primitivization of mental
life we mean by psychosis.
Thus this modest, careful, scholarly book finds a significant place in modern
psychiatry signaling to us clearly the direction in which the theory of psychosis
had to go.
LESTERL. HAVENS, M.D.
Harvard Medical School

ERNEST
HARMS. Origins of Modern Psychiatry. Springfield, Ill. : Thomas, 1967,
+
x 256 pp. $7.75.
Dr. Ernest Harms, a clinical psychologist of European origin, is mostly known
in this country for his editorial activity during the 1 9 4 0 ’ ~related
~ to the “Nervous
Child.” I n recent years, his name has often appeared in short publications con-
cerning a particular early psychiatrist, whose “forgotten” work was considered
worthy of mention.
From the broad title of this book, one would expect a definitive and authori-
tative study on the origins of modern psychiatry. This impression is further rein-
forced by the methodological position expressed at the beginning of the first chapter,
where it is said that “What stands out most impressively for anyone seeking insight,
especially in regard to abnormal psychology or psychiatry, is the almost fanatical
rejection of all previously expressed ideas by each advocate of a new theory, and
the presentation of the new theory as representing the first truly scientific approach.”