Throughout history, interest in the interaction between psyche and soma has been subject to broad swings of the pendulum. Advances in the "exact" biological sciences have focused attention recently on the quantifiable and reproducible aspects of disease. New knowledge has not brought the hoped for medical millenium, however, and attention has turned once again to psychological and psychosocial influences on physical well-being.

In this climate, a book about Freud's encounter with the cancer to which he ultimately succumbed seems apropos. Romm, a plastic