Review

Author(s): Ernest R. Hilgard

Review by: Ernest R. Hilgard
Source: The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Apr., 1945), pp. 296-297
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1417865
Accessed: 13-03-2016 00:00 UTC

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 296 BOOK REVIEWS

Law and Learning Theory; A Study in Legal Control. By UNDERHILL

MOORE and CHARLES C. CALLAHAN. New Haven, Yale Law Journal Com-

pany, 1943. Foreword by Mark May. Pp. vi, 136.

This is an effort to establish a new experimental discipline of legal

psychology by showing that under certain conditions the problems of

jurisprudence become psychological tasks. The results of the investigation

were obtained by observing the effect of city ordinances (in New Haven,

Connecticut) regulating the parking and driving of automobiles upon

certain aspects of the behavior of parkers and drivers in various areas

during four years. Observations were made immediately before and after

the experimental introduction of police notices governing traffic-response

in districts selected for convenient analysis by watchers in inconspicuous

posts of observation.

The authors compared parking behavior under three conditions; when

parking was unrestricted or not specifically controlled by any legal.enact-

ment, when restricted or prohibited but without tagging for over-parking,

and when restricted and enforced by tagging. The astounding fact, not

emphasized by the writers but derivable from inspection of the duration-

curves for parking, is the absence of any marked difference between regu-

lated and unregulated group-behavior. At any rate, increases and decreases

in parking-time following the special regulations of the Police Depart-

ment just about balance each other, suggesting that this type of behavior

is not noticeably affected by his sort of social control; i.e. that whatever

conformity occurred was already well-established in the habit-systems of

the driving population before the ordinances were enforced, so that little

specific effect could be directly attributed to them. The second half of

the report is an unsuccessful attempt to integrate the unexpected outcome

of the observations with Hull's learning theories and with the goal-

gradient hypothesis popularized by Miller and Dollard. To the present

reviewer the study is another laborious and expensive project yielding for

the psychologist but a small increment in new knowledge.

Teachers College, Columbia University GEORGE W. HARTMANN

The Neuromuscular Maturation of the Human Infant. By MYRTLE B.

McGRAW. New York, Columbia University Press, 1943. Pp. xiv, 140.

Here the author has made accessible in one place the results of her

studies which have appeared in a dozen journal articles. A chapter by

A. A. Weech entitled "Individual Development" digests an analysis of

data obtained in these studies published earlier by R. V. D. Campbell

and Weech.

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 BOOK REVIEWS 297

This is a convenient source to which to turn for useful illustrations of

the process of maturation in early childhood. The educational outcomes

suggested in the final chapter are already familiar, but they bear repetition.

Unfortunately the educational advice is of limited service because the

concept of maturation has never been well tooled for the teacher in the

more advanced school years. It is too much to ask the teacher to generalize

from the teaching of toilet-training to the teaching of long division or of

international settlements.

Stanford University ERNEST R. HILGARD

Self-Analysis. By KAREN HORNEY. New York, W. W. Norton and

Company, 1942. Pp. 309.

In this popular but unorthodox application of Freudism, the author offers

to mild and literate neurotics a way of overcoming those difficulties of

the personality which underlie various disturbing symptoms. As a means

of authentic character development and of real improvement, the book

seems pathetically ineffectual; any morale-building 'pep talk' or sermon

would probably be better. But as a device for suggesting to intelligent

readers that they can, and therefore, should dispense with psychiatrical

guidance (or misguidance) by using instead an honest and full examina-

tion of their own psychological structure, it may be of revolutionary signifi-

cance.

Dr. Horney's heresies have exposed her to ostracism from the profes-

sional guild; but it is hard for the informed to escape the conviction that

an old friend, a shrewd clergyman, or an insightful teacher can do more

to help most emotionally upset urbanites than the most eccentric prac-

titioners with a quaint variety of Viennese folklore or their institutional

imitators.

That we deceive ourselves, refuse to face many unpleasant facts about

our motives, and fail to achieve as much as we could if released from

emotional blocks are platitudinous but sound bits of wisdom derived from

other sources than clinical experience with the grossly 'maladjusted.' Dr.

Horney maintains that there are about ten basic neurotic trends which are

at the bottom of all psychic disturbances and that the patient who can rid

himself of illusions about the world and himself will be a better person,

for he will have surmounted barriers to his own full growth. The author

illustrates with a tormented young lady named Clare, whose alleged cure

was effected by finding an outlet for strong feeling, by increased self-

knowledge of driving forces, and by a change from attitudes which had

previously disturbed her social relations. This seems to be no more than a

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