You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This partial autobiography opens with the author's initiation into a Swiss psychiatric clinic where he has come for treatment of chronic alcoholism developed as a retreat from claustrophobia. With this as a starting point Mr. Molony goes back over his adult life beginning with his arduous months in a German prison camp in which he was interned during the early part of the World War. It was on his release from
this camp that he first experienced the symptom of claustrophobia. This trouble lessened somewhat during his subsequent life at Oxford and in Morocco, but reappeared under the stress of work with the League of Nations. It was during the latter period that he resorted to the use of alcohol.
The style is graphic and convincing, but very discursive with a reminiscent disregard for chronology confusing to the reader who is constantly disoriented as to time, place or both. Apparently much of the material included (incidents and associated emotions) was set down during the course of a successful and rapid (three months) analysis. The author's claustrophobia is traced to his prison experiences during the war and its exacerbations with alcoholic developments to the emotional strain incident to love affairs and to religious conflict. During the course of treatment, as is usual, the patient develops a deep veneration and respect for his physician and the technique used in treating him. For this reason and because he feels that the methods employed in his case might so easily be misused, he does not discuss the details of his analysis. That he has been stabilized by his therapeutic experience is evidenced by the fact that there has been no return of symptoms and he has been capable of writing three books, all of which have been published.
This book is of more interest to the psychiatrist than to the general reader. The author is concerned with making his own emotions clear rather than with presenting a sensational account of life in a mental hospital.