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Reading “My Flesh and Blood,” one cannot help, somehow, recalling Frank Harris's “My Life and Loves.” Both men, having attained to years considerably beyond those “of discretion,” seem bent upon telling the world what devils of fellows they were in their youth. Both of them, also, appear determined to remind their readers of every famous acquaintance they have made during their lives. Where Mr. Harris's autobiography, however, became distressingly messy, Mr. Viereck's remains strictly literary and pseudo-psychoanalytic. It remains also—except perhaps to the reader who is frankly bored by poetry—highly interesting. However, as a contribution to psychoanalysis it cannot be regarded seriously, for Mr. Viereck has contented himself with making such self-conscious deductions as practically any astute writer who has done a goodly amount of psychoanalytic reading might reasonably be expected to draw from his own literary compositions. While these deductions are generally entertaining, it is extremely doubtful if they are of any psychiatric value. The reader is also entitled to a suspicion whether Mr. Viereck has truly grasped the meaning of psychoanalysis. He tells us in one place that he did not have erotic dreams because, as Dr. Brill explained to him(?), he was free from repression. But if he is as free from repression as he claims he is, what, we may ask, is the emotional source for his creative poetry ?
Although Mr. Viereck, with artificial casualness, mentions conversations with Freud, with Stekel, and with Brill, there is nothing in the annotations accompanying his poems to indicate that he has ever been psychoanalyzed; in fact, these annotations would seem clearly to indicate that he has not. “I ensnare my emotions,” says Mr. Viereck in his foreword, and adds, “Maybe the flame of psychoanalysis flickers deceptively.” The flame which flickers deceptively, however, is not that of psychoanalysis, but rather that of Mr. Viereck's half-hearted preoccupation with various