Briefly Noted

B. F. SKINNER Benign Anarchist by Daniel N. Wiener Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996, xiv + 202 pp., $25.00.

Freud likely had no knowledge of Skinner but Skinner certainly knew of Freud and is appreciative of psychoanalysis. Skinner was rejected as a patient at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute at a time when many behavioral scientists were being invited to be analyzed. What might operant conditioning be like had he been accepted? Skinner saw Freud, like him, as a determinist and “remained remarkably favorable toward Freud [and used] psychoanalytic interpretations in his work, speculating about or dismissing them for not considering operant conditioning” (p. 124). Wiener, a psychologist who knew Skinner and understands his theories, has written a good biography that supplements Daniel W. Bjork's B. F. Skinner: A Life (Basic Books, ; reviewed in Psychoanalytic Books, 6, 65-66). It is inexplicable that Bjork's biography is never mentioned in the text, an omission probably better explained by psychoanalysis than behaviorism.

BODY, BLOOD AND SEXUALITY A Psychoanalytic Study of St. Francis' Stigmata and their Historical Context by Nitza Yarom New York: Peter Lang, 1992, 148 pp., $39.95.

St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order and best known for his preachments of love for all creatures, was the first stigmatic in history. Yarom, a clinical psychologist who has been studying medieval history at Tel Aviv University, presents, in this small book, her thesis of stigmata as manifestations of conversion hysteria. As most stigmatics (and hysterics) are women, St. Francis holds particular interest for Yalom who describes the hysterical man as one whose oedipal fantasies cause him to dread mature functioning and sexuality, and wanting to be loved by all. She parallels his “psychological profile” to that of the Wolf Man and the resolution of his bisexual struggle. She ascribes St. Francis's love for suffering creatures and compassion for Jesus—his religiousness—to his fe