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In 1951, thirty years after its first publication, Dr. Michael Balint reviewed The Book of the IT in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. He stated that this was perhaps the very first writing in medicine that seriously held the idea that illnesses which impress us as somatic or organic are caused by emotions and in fact, are un-understood or misinterpreted expressions of emotions. Now approximately thirty years after his death, Dr. Carl Grossman, a San Francisco analyst and his wife have written a biography of Georg Walther Groddeck (1866-1934), “The Wild Analyst,” author of The Book of the It. It is interesting that although he is now internationally acclaimed as one of the early pioneers of psychosomatic medicine, and that during his lifetime Sigmund Freud explicitly acknowledged Groddeck as the source of his concept of the “Id,” very little has been known about the man and his works. As Laurence Durrell writes in his introduction to The Book of the It, “it is perhaps largely his [Groddeck's] own fault.” He considered his first job, as that of healer; the writer, and teacher took second place. Over and above this, Groddeck also knew how quickly the disciple can convert the living word into the dead canon.
At an early age, Groddeck learned the ability to defy tradition, make his own decisions, and adapt treatment to suit the needs of the patient from his father, also a well-known physician, and Ernest Schweninger, Chancellor Bismarck's personal physician. The latter became the early mentor of Georg Groddeck. He was taught to doubt every claim he could not personally prove, to question every cure he could not duplicate, to regard the physician as a mere catalyst setting curative processes in motion. However, from his own experiences with patients, and later through his contacts with Sigmund Freud, he perceived the characteristics of infantile sexuality and symbolisms, and used transference and resistance as pivotal points in therapy.
The essence of The Wild A