SIR,—Professor Eysenck is well known, not only among psychoanalysts, for
his prejudices on the subject of analysis. I wonder if it is right for you to employ him to review Mr. Brown's book (Spectator, August 30)? There are hundreds of qualified people who would do so more objectively.
This matter goes beyond your ordinary duty to your readers and to the authors and publishers of the books reviewed in your columns, important though those responsibilities are. Some of the people who read the review will be mentally ill people who are pinning their hopes of a cure on this kind of treatment. To read this review can only increase the burden of their fears and anxieties. It is cruel to raise false hopes, but it is also cruel to dash hopes unnecessarily.
I myself owe my mental health to a Freudian analysis. Since social prejudices still surround the whole topic of mental illness, I must ask you to conceal my name and address.
ANALYSAND II
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