Emily Holmes Coleman: The Shutter of Snow
New York: The Viking Press. 1930. 245 p. $2.50.
The Shutter of Snow is a description of the impressions of the author, a graduate of a well known college for women, during a two month’s confinement in a State Hospital where she was successfully treated for a toxic exhaustive psychosis following the birth of a child. It is a record of her responses to the Hospital environment and treatment. The effects of the various therapeutic measures employed to restore her mental health are cleverly woven into the account so that the reader is conscious of the gradual progress of the patient without having it pointed out to him. In the same way one is aware of the situations which aggravated the patient and resulted in setbacks to her recovery. On entering the Hospital the patient is bewildered, resentful, suspicious, emotionally uncontrolled, confused by delusions and illusions, hallucinations. As time goes on her imaginings become less morbid; her delusions of grandeur and persecution diminish; her resistance to authority weakens; the visions and voices of her hallucinations fade; her attempts to avenge herself for some supposed wrong become less frequent; her responses to her husband and the various persons in the Hospital become more normal. With the clearing of her mental fog comes a realization that she must conform in a number of ways if she is to get free of the institution. She becomes eager to work and to assume responsibilities. From time to time there are lapses when she is unable to control herself if her wishes are interfered with, but these lapses become less and less frequent.
Mrs. Coleman has engaged in literary pursuits before and her clinical picture is drawn with skill. The human quality of her book as well as its delightful touches of humor should recommend it even to the layman. However, to those associated with the study and treatment of mental and nervous disorders it is of particular significance. It is another addition to the testimonies of mentally sick patients which have been accumulating since the phenomenally widespread interest aroused by The Mind That Found, Itself. Since four years have elapsed between the experience described in the book and the writing of it, one cannot be too certain that the details of the introspective and retrospective impressions are accurate. Some invention of detail is admitted. Nevertheless the book gives a convincing account of the experiences of an intelligent woman in a Mental Hospital. Marion Braungard
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