Besides the introduction and the conclusion, this book contains sixteen chapters, devoted to the psychoanalysis of various authors from Homer to Kipling. Special chapters are devoted to the analysis of Keats, Shelley, Poe, and Hearn. In several chapters Freud's views and explanations are discussed, and in the introduction the author proclaims his allegiance to Freud rather than to Adler, Jung, and others, who do not adhere to strict Freudian interpretations. The term "unconscious," we are told, is almost synonymous with "erotic." Other authors use "sexual" where Mordell uses "erotic," the former term being used when there is no necessary sex object, while "erotic" is a term of special sex appeal. Those who are acquainted with the specific or the general trends of psychoanalysis do not need detailed accounts of the contents of the book, others are referred to it as an introduction to, or as a primer of, the Freudian doctrines and methods of interpretation. Psychoanalysis is based upon the assumption of the transmission of acquired characteristics.
Every book, he claims, is planned because of the "erotic" of the author, and the only part that shows conscious traces is the composition. As a criticism and review, we might use the method of psychoanalysis upon his own work. By the application of fixed symbolism and a liberal use of "I think" we may refer the book to the unconscious (or the erotic) wishes of the author, for of all books he says "the very choice of the subject apart from the internal treatment furnishes the proof he [the author] could not help but choose that which interested him most because of some experience in his own life." Moreover, we might be forced to interpret Mordell's statement that he can psychoanalyze all literary works as an example of a "conscious" feeling of superiority acting as a compensation for a real inferiority, the nature of which the reviewer has not time to determine analytically, and about which he hesitates to speculate.
—Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 16 [1919]