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One of the most difficult problems of modern-day warfare, involving as it does heavy emphasis in air activity, is the reactive pattern of those men who make up the crews of combat and transport aircraft. Science has yielded us techniques for the rapid development
of newer and better ways to overcome the pull of gravity and move heavier than air machines at greater speeds and in more intricate fashions. But these advances are worthless unless the man controlling the machines can keep up and solve the conflicts and problems engendered by aerial warfare without breaking under the stress.
The author of this book has attacked the problem with experience and understanding and given us what to date is probly the most comprehensive evaluation of psychological problems involved in flying yet to be published. As psychiatrist to the Eighth Air Force, the author had access to many hundreds of reactive situations and has analyzed his material in a most thorough fashion.
He begins with a general discussion on the symbol value of flying and the love of flying, rightly stressing the peculiar erotic attachment of flyers for their planes. This approach is essential if one would understand not only the positive but the negative rejection patterns occurring in pilots who develop fear of flying. The reaction often is more reminiscent of blighted love than of other neurotic patterns. Pilot attitudes are portrayed in these chapters in direct quotations in many cases and one gets a feeling for the pilot transmitted through the words.
The relationship of the previous reactions to aggression is next undertaken, and from this the author turns to the problem of the neuroses of flying. He feels from an etiological view that there are two general types: the first due to conflict arising from the symbolic meaning of flight, and the second arising from aggressive feelings towards killed or wounded companions. He rightly does not include fatigue and exhaustion conditions so frequently misused in rel