An Imperfect Mother

The wave of psycho-analytic novels that is passing over us tosses up to shore An Imperfect Mother: by J. D. Beresford. The gist of it is that a young man is unpleasantly affected by woman's laughter because his mother laughed at him when he was small. Tremendously exciting, eh, what? However, the author assures us in a footnote that discovering the complex resolved it and everyone lived happily ever after. We sometimes wish said wave had not entirely washed away the distinction between medicine and fiction. But it is perhaps old-fashioned to prefer literature to a dissertation on dyspepsia or a treatise on toothache. -The Step Ladder, Vol. 2