The Spectacle of a Man

This is a novel about a man whose excessive, pathologic shyness, increased by stuttering and stammering since childhood, made it impossible for him to establish any satisfactory relationships with men and women, resulting in almost complete withdrawal from normal social intercourse and a sense of great inferiority and unhappiness. The author shows how, through psychoanalytic therapy, the patient is freed from the tyrannical domination of his unconscious infantile emotions and cravings and in consequence is able to live a freer and fuller affective life. In working out the psychodynamics, the edipus situation in its simplest and most classic form is utilized. Only a relatively small part of the book occupies itself with the actual analysis. By far the largest portion is devoted to a description of the patient's actual life during the analytic months. Writing for the intelligent lay reader, the author has wisely refrained from the use of technical