Dr Paul Bousfield provides an easy reading introduction of psychoanalysis to the common person. In simple, non-judgmental terms, Bousfield explains how under stress one can fall back and regress to the security of infancy fantasies without being conscious of this regression.

Many people, while not considering themselves as suffering from any nervous ailment, nor desiring the services of a physician, are yet far from being perfectly happy in their mental outlook and temperament. Either their feelings are too easily roused, or they are inclined to worry, to be depressed, irritable, nervous, or over-sensitive.

Trifles which to them seem no trifles interfere with the smooth course of their daily lives, or this slight abnormality may manifest itself in an over-sensitiveness to physical pain or to mental or moral difficulties and conflicts.

It is with the hope of helping a few such individuals to a better understanding of themselves, and through this to a more equable temperament and greater happiness, that this little book is written.