Conquer Fear
- Author:
John Langdon-Davies. Feature
Books Ltd., London, 1948. pp. 173. 5s.
This little book, by an experienced popular writer on science and on contemporary problems, will contribute something to mental hygiene. It has been read by the reviewer in as naive a frame of mind as possible to try and find the places that might jar. There are not many, despite my prejudice against the slightly self-conscious baby-language which is now so general with popular educators, editors of news-letters to the staffs of large enterprises and so on. Mr. Langdon-Davies ” gets across ” with his sincerity and his skill in stating psycho-analytic doctrine in a frank and warmly human way.
Personality development and social climate are well integrated into his doctrine of causation of ” fear-sickness Instead of case-notes he uses a mass of letters from nervously distressed people as his text upon which to preach. He quickly attacks the fallacy of attributing our ills solely to the economic system, and takes the reader a considerable distance into the field of inter-personal and group relations. He points to the dangers of using mere superficial knowledge about ” unhappy childhood experiences ” as an alibi for failure and defeatism in anxiety states.
The commentary on these poignant human documents, which the author intersperses, is of variable quality. At times one becomes rather acutely aware of his lack of psychiatric training, and moreover of a certain ambivalence about doctors and psychiatrists. Thus, in commenting on a letter written most probably by a woman with a severe reactive depression with depersonalization and hallucinatory experiences, he confidently diagnoses schizophrenia but advises ” three months’ complete rest ” and ” probably treatment ” in his reply to her (p. 30).
Mr. Langdon-Davies knows psycho-dynamic theory well and simplifies it to good purpose. Its integration with medicine is less well done, and the popular reader will almost certainly be left with the impression that the two are practically unrelated, especially as he uses the word ” doctor ” to describe persons who are on the whole only capable of excluding organic disease. Even though he may be often right, it is doubtful policy to undermine further the confidence of patients in their practitioners, the younger generation of whom are fast learning something about psychiatry and will be better taught.
Mr. Langdon-Davies advocates a kind of Dejerine method of persuasion technique for self-help in the chapter on ” The Cure of Fear-sickness “. This may work in the upper intelligence levels but presupposes probably more capacity for insightful detachment than the person at or below the median is capable of.
A last query concerns p. 166. Here the author stresses the need for parents to refrain from stimulating their children’s sex feelings by excessive physical affection. In so doing he runs the risk of throwing out the baby with the bath-water. There is probably more danger from taboos on tenderness than from smothering affection, and the puritan, anti-sensual tendencies of our culture may be given unintentional aid and comfort through a perfectly correct piece of observation wrongly emphasized.
These points of critique notwithstanding, this is a sound, humane and enlightening book, perhaps the best the reviewer has met, to recommend to interested persons. The last chapter, on mental hygiene of family life, is especially good. One wishes that Mr. Langdon-Davies had enlarged it to include the discussion of the needs of older children. H.V.D.
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