SWEETHEART, I HAVE BEEN TO SCHOOL
By
Mary Noone, after 18 years of an increasingly incompatible marriage to a hard-drinking, horse-breeding Georgian, which reduced her to tears, sleeplessness, and finally a nervous breakdown, was taken to a small mental hospital in West Virginia- ""quite a school"". An innocent, this is her wide-eyed and often very funny account of her initiation to Freud, her introduction to herself (she is ""Dejected, Rejected, Frustrated and Depressed""), and to the program there which begins with calisthenics and basketball (a wonderful game after you have learned about Hostility), picnics, lectures, and that ""meeting of the minds""- group therapy. There is her general squeamishness : about sex; her interest in her roommates and other inmates and a Navy Captain; her sessions with Dr. Chambers to find out what her Problem is; and her general improvement as she becomes aggressive in basketball, argumentative in group therapy, and finally ready to return home- a grateful patient.... As against the devastating demolition of The Frog Pond, this is demure and disarming- and along with the perhaps calculated naivete-there's a very genuine pleasure for all concerned.