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.
The author having gone through five attacks of a manic-depressive psychosis sets down a series of his impressions in the fourth-fifth interval which the writer of a short, unsigned preface deems, and we believe incorrectly, more trustworthy than material obtained by the psychoanalytic method. More trustworthy for what purpose is not set forth, nor does it appear that the comparison stems from one really acquainted with the method in question save perhaps verbally.
In a series of preludes the author sets forth his ancestry as of old Colonial stock, 1633 Quakers and later Methodists, and other details of paternal and maternal activities, mental and physical. There was modest and extreme religious zealotry, inclusive of yogi and “trance writing” activities, “hysterical” behavior and evident psychotic breakdowns. Projection was an evident mechanism often psychotic in nature with an evident manic fringe which offer the author some constitutional foundation for his own behavior. Mother and father dragged out a thirty years’ war of temperamental inadequacies in adjustment. The author and his father had “difficulties.” An older and gifted sister attempted suicide and was apparently also a manic-depressive and her father relation in the Œdipus complex was classical. Sleep walking and bladder urge were among the early neurotic manifestations of the author. There was much sickness in the early days. This enhanced the habit of reading, and was