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258 Books solid discussion of apparent movement (especially valuable to the kineticist) to pique interest. The book is, then, a highly readable introduction to some of the physical and physiological facts and more of the higher processes involved in visual perception (there is little about audition). For these reasons, it may have a certain value to both artists and scientists who have an interest in the initial psychological interactions of humans with the physical world. There are many illustrations, a handy glossary and nearly 750 references. Imagery: Current Cognitive Approaches. Sydney Joelson Segal, ed. Academic Press, New York, 1971. 137 pp., illus. $7.50. Mental Images-A Defence. Alastair Hannay. Allen & Unwin, London, 1972. 264 pp. 24.95. Reviewed by Jacques Mandelbrojt* The first book consists of five separate chapters dealing respectively with imagery and language, visions in visual perception, the definition of a mental image, imagery and perception, and imagery and hallucination. Mental images are the result of internal brain processes that, contrary to perception, do not necessarily result from outside stimuli nor lead to a characteristic behaviour. Indeed, it seems that mental images are more frequent when muscular action is curbed, for instance, Yogi or Zen Buddhist mystics claim that for a mystical experience ‘any activity of the body is likely to interfere and prevent it, even trying to have an image may well prevent such process. . . . images are subject to no one’s personal control’ (cf. chapter on definition of an image). This quoted statement is reminiscent of the views on automatic writing held by the surrealists. The book confirms the difficulty of studying mental images experimentally, since verbal reports of subjects must be relied upon. This is also the reason why such images have long been discarded in psychology. However, their importance is becoming more generally recognized because of a renewed interest in the internal processes in the brain. As is usually the case when artists are confronted with scientific books, they will be less interested in the details of ingenious experiments than in general considerations and in possible extensions of the results that conclude each of the chapters. The importance for artists of mental images, which I have emphasized in Leonardo [I], can be summed up by the conclusion in the article on imagery and language: ‘In the beginning there is imagery even before the word.’ This is also true in the case of abstract reasoning where the role of the image as opposed to verbal language has been stressed by the mathematician Jacques Hadamard 121. The author of the chapter on images and language suggests that images can be linked syntactically. This is in accordance with considerations published in Leonardo by the reviewer and Pierre Mounoud [3]. Another chapter that I found especially interesting is the one that deals with visions in visual perception where the author emphasizes the role of icons (images) in perception . He says: ‘Much of the visual field is never looked at directly . . . . Hence an integrated view of a continuous world that we perceive must be constructed out of many glances and all that we know about the visual world around us is constructed out of the information contained in the icons.’ Considerations of this sort can serve as a starting point for artists in their reflections on images. They will realize that with the psychological mechanism of perception one is far indeed from classical perspective. Mental Images-A Defence is a rather lengthy dissertation on the use that philosophers have made of the concept of a mental image. I do not believe that this book will be of much interst to those working in the visual fine arts. *Le Bastidon, I3510 Eguilles, France. References 1. J. Mandelbrojt, On Mental Images and Their Pictorial Representation, Leonardo 3, 19 (1970). 2. J. Hadamard, The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field (New York: Dover, 1954). 3. J. Mandelbrojt and P.Mounoud, On the Relevance of Piaget’s Theory to the Visual Arts, Leonardo 4, 155 (1971). Getting There Without Drugs. Bury1 Payne. Viking Press, New York, 1973. 204 pp., illus. $7.95. Reviewed by Robert Baldwin** In recent years there has been a large number of books published on ‘mind expansion’, that...

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