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This volume is fascinating from a number of perspectives. It is an autobiographical account of the author's involvement in the Austrian Socialist underground movement between 1934 and 1939. The recounting of the events themselves makes for intriguing reading. Using a code name, maintaining a balance of trust and suspicion toward one's co-conspirators as well as toward those in need of help, and the real and imagined dangers involved in such an enterprise help form a stimulating narrative.
But this is not written by a woman who is primarily a writer or a politician. It is written by a psychoanalyst who courageously describes her own background and motivations for doing what she did, as well as her reactions to the many revolutionaries whom she encountered. She offers us an unusual opportunity not just to be intrigued with her revolutionary activities, but also to study her motives, both as consciously portrayed and as the reader comes to understand them through insights into her character.
Gardiner's account begins in Vienna in 1934. She was in analysis with Ruth Mack Brunswick and was a medical student at the university of Vienna. The Austrian Socialist movement was being forcibly suppressed by the Fascist government then in power. Her wish to become actively involved with this Socialist movement when it went underground becomes understandable in terms of some background material she provides. She had come from a wealthy midwest family, which provided her as a child with much material wealth but with little family involvement. This contributed to an early involvement in social causes seeking to redress the imbalance between the wealthy and the poor.
Gardiner attended Wellesley at the end of the first World War, having already developed an interest in politics and current events while in high school. At Wellesley an event occurred which she claims, with some embarrassment, revealed her asceticism. She had been a book collector and owned a number of valuable