Instinct and the Unconscious
A Contribution to a Biological Theory of the Psycho-Neuroses

First published in 1922 as the second edition of a 1920 original, and formed from lectures delivered in the Psychological Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in 1919, this book attempts 'to put into a biological setting the system of psycho-therapy which came to be generally adopted in Great Britain in the treatment of the psycho-neuroses of war' in the wake of WWI. Rivers suggests a variety of treatments for war-related psychological disorders, including hypnotism, and the possible link between of military duties and 'the neuroses of warfare'. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of psychology or in psychological disorders arising from combat situations.

Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. The unconscious; 3. Suppression; 4. Suppression and inhibition; 5. The context of the unconscious; 6. The nature of instinct; 7. The danger-instincts; 8. Suppression and the all-or-none principle; 9. Instinct and suppression; 10. Dissociation; 11. The 'complex'; 12. Suggestion; 13. Hypnotism; 14. Sleep; 15. The psycho-neuroses; 16. Hysteria or substitution-neurosis; 17. Other modes of solution; 18. Regression; 19. Sublimation; Appendix I. Freud's psychology of the unconscious; Appendix II. A case of claustrophobia; Appendix III. The repression of war experience; Appendix IV. War-neurosis and military training; Appendix V. Freud's conception of the 'censorship'; Appendix VI. 'Wind-up'; Appendix VII. Psychology and the war; Appendix VIII. The instinct of acquisition; Index.