Analyze Yourself: Enabling Anyone to Become Deeply Psycho-Analyzed Without a Personal Analyst by E. Pickworth FarrowMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
What kind of book is this?
This is an expository work; while it contains a practical guide (the practical method mentioned in the title), it mostly resembles personal experiences and anecdotes by the author.
Rational & Why I read this book
To know thyself. Self-Analysis promises to help with that. That is why I put this short, old book on my reading list when I stumbled upon it.
The unity of the book — what is the book about as a whole?
The book takes you on a journey through the author's life experiences and insights he personally had with Self-Analysis. He builds upon, then alters and extends Freund's methods and proposes a practical way to uncover deeply routed deficiencies and complexes in oneself that date back to infancy.
The book's structure
No lesser than Sigmund Freud himself wrote the foreword to this book.
The book then contains two prefaces and 10 chapters:
1. Origin of the Author's Interest in Psycho-Analysis
2. Experiences with two Psycho-Analysits
3. A Practical Method of Self-Analysis
4. A Castration Complex
5. An Experience in Infancy and its Effects
6. A Memory Going Back to the Age of Six Months
7. On the Psychological Importance of Slaps and Blows in Early Infancy
8. On the Importance of avoiding Castation Threats against Children
9. Psycho-Analysis and Early Complexes
10. Additional Notes
One particular lesson
The proposed method of free-association can be summarised as follows: Put aside some quiet time free from interruptions. Prepare pen and Paper. Now simply allow thoughts arise freely without criticising anything or holding anything back and write down whatever comes into your conscious mind at any given instant (no matter how absurd or seemingly useless; i.e. even thoughts like "this is silly", "this is a waste of time", "this does not work" etc. should simply put down to paper). Doing this for weeks or months is supposed to lead to insights and even recovering memories from your infancy. I immediately recognised to how similar this method is to the now so popular morning pages proposed by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.
Judgement & Recommendations - Who should read this?
Don't read this. It's outdated, strange. Not much more to say. The method as described above surely is worth trying out, but I consider the book itself a waste of time. One for me deeply annoying fact is that the author refers to himself as "the author". Overall, this is a 4 out of 10 (⭑⭑) on my personal rating scale which translates into "Rather bad; personally finished, but definitely would not give it a second read."
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