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Martin Grotjahn: The Voice of the Symbol Los Angeles: Mara Publishers, 1972.
MARTIN GROTJAHN has a peculiar habit when taking weekend walks with me. He can be startled by almost anything. If it is small enough he picks it up and if it is beautiful enough he carries it home. It may be a perforated stone at the beach, an odd piece of wood, a dried beetle, a rattle shed by a snake, a part of an antler, a chicken bone, a lichen, or a feather from a red tailed hawk. At home he affixes his loot on the wall of his room where the montage has grown to the dimension of a triptych, which he calls the "Garden of Eden." It makes an astonishing, pleasing harmony, but it startles the unprepared visitor.
Now there is a strong resemblance between this "Garden of Eden" and my friend's new book. Like his montage, it is composed of symbols Martin Grotjahn collected on his walk through life and his work as a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, but mostly as a therapist. Each piece on the wall and chapter in the book is a trophy of suffering, reminiscent of work, courageous persistence and an unending ability to be startled and to see familiar things with unfamiliar eyes. Each chapter is symbolic of mastery of reality, be it inner or outer, concerned with life or with death. The book reflects his affection for family and friends, teachers, colleagues, and students. It also reflects his partial identification with many people from Oedipus to Hieronymus Bosch and Sigmund Freud. In each of them he finds an important missing piece of himself, and thus it becomes a part of his friends who read about it. As Hieronymus Bosch tried to master the whole universe and the meaning of man in a symbolic picture, so Grotjahn tries to convey the wisdom and thought of a life-time