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 publication of A Search for Man's Sanity, the selected letters of Trigant Burrow, affords occasion to comment on both book and author, the latter having been one of America's first psychoanalysts.
Burrow was born in Norfolk, Virginia, in September, 1875. Both his parents were people of culture and discernment. The father, a pharmacist in an era when this profession demanded much technical skill and knowledge, was an informed student of the sciences. The mother appears to have been a strong-willed woman and a devout Roman Catholic. She was apparently instrumental in shaping Burrow's decision to enter Fordham University. Soon after entering college, the influence of Burrow's father became felt, and though Burrow became increasingly disenchanted with Catholic religious tenets, he nevertheless remained close to his mother while rejecting her religious convictions. From adolescence Burrow was exposed to the tension that prevailed between his parents who, while continuing to live in the same house, became progressively more estranged from one another. Yet Burrow appears to have been close to his father as well.
Burrow graduated from Fordham at the age of twenty and after a year of pre-medical work, during which time his father died, he entered the University of Virginia Medical School. He seems to have been very happy there and was an excellent student. Following his graduation Burrow studied obstetrics briefly in Munich and then moved on to Vienna where he continued training at the Allgemeine Kranken-haus. Courses there with Kraft-Ebing and Wagner Von Jauregg aroused his interest in psychiatry, and upon returning to the States Burrow continued his medical studies at Johns Hopkins Medical School. He also studied English literature intensively, apparently still searching for the area that would prove most meaningful to him.
The present book of Burrow's letters begins during this period. He was twenty-seven years old, and had just met a nurse at The Johns Hopkins Hospital—