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A PRINCE OF OUR DISORDER. By John E. Mack. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976, 537 pp., $15.00.
This is an extraordinarily clearly written and readable biography of Lawrence of Arabia. The author, a psychoanalyst and also an expert historian, has devoted more than a decade of research to gathering his data. Probably nowhere else is so much information about Lawrence to be found. Among the new sources used are interviews with desert tribesmen who provided eyewitness accounts of events that have been doubted by critics. The son of the Turkish officer who was involved in the sexual assault on Lawrence at Derá was questioned about his father's sex life. The psychoanalytic reader will be aware that Mack has kept his psychological explanations simple, the book having apparently been intended for the general public. Except in rare instances, psychological information is not documented by specific references to the literature. Mack tends to isolate certain aspects of Lawrence's life without attempting to tie them in with the total field of his existence. The author states that "some qualities in all of us must stand by themselves without explanation." With the rule of psychic determinism thus suspended, areas of Lawrence's life are exempt from psychological conjectures. Fortunately, this attitude is not all pervasive. The book is essentially a biography, with the psychoanalytic contributions concentrated principally in the Introduction, Chapter 19, page 321, and Chapters 33 and 34. The author states that his purpose is to offer a biographical study of a "public" figure who lives out elements of his inner life in the public area. Mack believes that, if data about his inner life were obtainable, information about the psychology of action could be developed.