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Farrow, M.A., D.Sc. George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. Pp. 153. 6s.
It is always, for doctors, a matter of interest to learn of ways and means by which individuals find they can improve their physical and mental health. But the doctor soon learns something which patients do not so readily grasp, namely that what is effective with one sick person will not necessarily help another apparently similarly placed.
The author having tried treatment by two different analysts discovered he could do himself more good by writing down his thoughts as they came to him through free association. Although many have experimented with this method few can have done so as thoroughly. The results given are stated to be the product of 2,800 hours' work spread over eighteen years, involving 12,000,000 words.
Eight years ago Joanna Field in A Life of One's Own, published many pages of similar free writings, expressing surprise at their content.
The author describes first his early experiences in analysis and then the technique he evolved for himself. Most of the remainder of the book is devoted to his. personal experience when three years old of a castration incident and another and for him more important incident that he dates back to the age of six months. The psychological importance of slaps and blows in early infancy is given great attention, and the author ventures the opinion that "introversion " tends to be the result of such treatment.
Freud contributed a Foreword to the book consisting of nine lines. u ^ c