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Dr. Abramson is an allergist and psychiatrist. He appears to have written this book equally for the professional and the lay reader, to emphasize the importance of emotional factors in the aetiology of allergic disorder, and to indicate the role, method, and problems of psychotherapy in such cases. He also expresses the hope that parents who read it may be helped in understanding the complexity of their relationship to their children. His patient, Alice, is afflicted with severe eczema, together with moderate asthma and hay fever, and started this treatment in her thirties after many years of disappointment in previous searches for healing.
Dr. Abramson has recorded an enormous number of interviews on tape, and the main portion of the book consists of fragments selected to illustrate in Alice's own words her relationship with her mother and her gradual emancipation. The author warns us that this manner of presentation may make for tedious reading; this warning is amply justified by the subsequent two hundred pages.
Alice makes good progress in treatment, and a verbatim record of a patient's contributions to the psychotherapeutic interview can always provide some interest to the analytic reader, but there is much that is repetitive, circumstantial, and banal in these transcriptions. The American idiom adds to the difficulty of reading. The author adds explanatory comments in places, such as: “(Even the sex act was immediately and consciously dominated by thoughts, not of love, but of the mother's attitudes.)” In others he records his own stimulative or interpretative comments on the patient's material:
“Doctor: You said you felt stupid when you used the wrong towel when you were a little girl at home?
Alice: Yes.
Doctor: What made you feel stupid?
Alice: I guess she called me stupid.
Doctor: Is that all you felt?
Alice: No, there was more feeling there than just being stupid. I resented it when Mother got so angry because I used the wrong towel…'
When Alice has shown a consid