PHOBIAS AND OBSESSIONS

Fascinating documentation of the foibles the psyche is heir to--where they come from (usually a childhood trauma), how they can best be treated (behavior modification gets high marks) but not, oddly enough, why Jane is terrified of bugs because she moved to a spider-infested house as a child, but her brother (who lived there too) is not. Phobics seem to produce such exaggerated symptoms of fear--fainting, immobility, cold sweats, panic so extreme that it resembles dying--and exaggerated fear of such unlikely things--wasps, flying, leaving the house, going to school, even people--that to non-phobics their fear seems improbable. But Melville makes what is surely difficult to live With slightly more comprehensible, and certainly interesting to read about.