The Autobiography of David
Edited by Ernest Raymond. Victor oollancz, London. 1946. 7s. bd. net.
This intensely human and at times moving document should he read by all psychiatrists, general practitioners, psychiatric social workers, Local Authority Mental Health Committee members and the framers of our new National Health Service. It contains the edited writings of a sufferer from a severe obsessive compulsive state, whose main symptoms are fear of open spaces and a compulsion to indecent exposure?crippling to any form of social success?and yet that sufferer was for many years prominent in Fleet Street as the London Editor of a leading Scottish Daily paper, and was the founder of the ” Arbitrate First ! Bureau The book is remarkable for its obvious sincerity and its studied understatement even when the author appears to have legitimate cause for complaint. Tts main professional interest lies in the sorry figure cut by our best therapeutic efforts, in fact the only doctor in the book who earns good marks is one who apparently did no more than encourage the author to carry on because ” the sensitive always suffer However it matters little that one doctor could bolster up the patient platitudinously ; whereas an unfortunate psycho-analyst, whose passion for truth outran his bedside manner, was the reverse of helpful. The point is that the entire system of doctors and hospitals completely failed to cope with this case, and the revelation of how some of them set about the task is painful to mental health workers.
Nor can we take refuge in the thought that most of this happened twenty to forty years ago. We believe that things are somewhat better now, but there is much to be done before we have any right to complacency. It is doubtful if a fellow sufferer of Mr. David ‘s in 1946 would find adequate treatment unless he happened to live in one of a few fortunate places or was financially well off.
Many may feel that this book does more harm than good by its damaging revelations and by undermining that delicate growth?public confidence in psychiatry and mental hospitals. But we must take our medicine and redouble our efforts to improve our methods, train more therapists and organize an efficient community care service and above all make preventive measures our top priority.
This is no book for the student of psychopathology? the author is not skilled in introspective analysis, nor has he much insight into the nature of his condition. The editing is most skilful as one would expect from Mr. Raymond, but the very fact of editing still further robs the book of interest to the analyst. As a description of symptoms it is very vivid, and the account of the impact of various hospitals on a sensitive intelligent man merits careful study. His years of solid achievement in spite of all must command respect and give his story an authority which it might otherwise lack. It is definitely a book for the humanitarian and for the professional mental health worker, and it is to be hoped that they, rather than a sensation-hungry section of the public will be the main readers. The text studiously avoids cheap sensationalism and is presented with dignity and restraint, but it undoubtedly contains inflammable material.
Not the least of the book’s virtues is that it is very readable. K.S.
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