CASE HISTORIES 21 



approach I made towards them resulted in mental panic and 

 flight. Consequently psychoanalytic treatment was powerless 

 to help him. At first I had had hopes of a cure. Perhaps if he 

 had consented to taking desiccated thyroid it would have stim- 

 ulated him to such a degree that he could have suppressed the 

 perverse cravings sufficiently to be willing to recognize them and 

 talk of them, and then psychoanalysis could have been used. 



He is now introverting more and more. Already the realm 

 of fantasy has so far displaced reality that he is largely indifferent 

 to whether he remains in the hospital or not. 



DIXON 



History: He was a tall, thin, weak-looking fellow with a 

 long, very narrow head and a high-arched palate. His age was 

 twenty-nine, and he was the youngest of four children. The 

 father died of pulmonary tuberculosis when the patient was seven 

 years old. He surmised there hadn't been much love between 

 the parents. The father criticized the mother for being too 

 affectionate towards the oldest son. This older brother used to 

 beat the patient a great deal. 



He went to school until fourteen but had reached only the 

 fourth grade. He had difficulty in applying himself to his studies. 

 He didn't care much for rough and tumble games with other boys. 

 For two years after leaving school he worked as a tabulator of 

 weights in a coal yard but wasn't successful. At sixteen he 

 entered the army, didn't like it and bought a discharge. Next 

 he tried the marine corps and was given a medical discharge 

 after three months' service. 



From seventeen to twenty-six years of age he led a roving, 

 unsuccessful life, wandering from job to job over all the eastern 

 portion of the country from Chicago and New York to Florida. 

 He worked usually as waiter or dishwasher in cheap restaurants 

 or in the galley of ocean ships for single voyages. 



Early in the war he was drafted, and within two months was 

 in France and served as a cook in a camp far from the front. 

 Less than three months later he was in hospital on suspicion of 

 appendicitis (these pains in the abdomen have persisted and may 



