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There have been a number of books describing life in "insane asylums" written, for the most part, by individuals who had passed through a psychotic episode. The author, to take him at face value, is described on the dust jacket as "a brilliant newspaper man, a welcome speaker at luncheon clubs and an active figure in civic affairs. He left his world a 'social success', but a 'psychic failure'. He is where he is of his own volition. He is a dipsomaniac. He had spent thousands of dollars to rid himself of his insatiable craving for liquor and the state institution is his haven of retreat."
It is unfortunately true, as the author points out in his introduction, that the physicians usually know their patients only "from a height". He feels that he is in a position to see the "officials, the conduct of the institution and the attitude of the public from a viewpoint which neither those who must control and guard the aberrated nor the average layman can get—the viewpoint of one of the patients." Although the book is written in a style that is at times difficult to read, he does manage to convey, here and there, graphic portraits of institutional life.
One learns a great deal about the psychiatric approach of the modern hospital physician. The treatment for the author's alcoholism consists of keeping him locked up away from temptation and alcohol. "I will be kept confined here until both the physician and myself are convinced that the mental groove is erased. Then we will test our convictions. Into my room will be brought a bottle of whiskey. It will be left there. I will have free access to it. I can see it, smell it, taste it if I wish, and thus test out whether it has any further power to call me." (Psychiatry 1932!)
The psychoanalyst will be interested in the chapter entitled "The Sterilization Spectre," in which the author describes the reaction of the patients to a law permitting sterilization of male and female patients not too aged to procreate "… The pa