Pivotal Moments in Nursing: Leaders Who Changed the Path of a Profession, Volume I Book

Subtitle: A Psychoanalyst Examines His Life

In this brooding memoir, an aging psychoanalyst looks back on his bleak formative years growing up in poverty in Texas during the 1920s. His father, a physician who was unable to sustain a practice because of bad health (tuberculosis), was bedridden throughout much of Wheelis's boyhood. He was a severe taskmaster, once making his son cut the grass in the yard with a razor, which took the entire summer to complete. Throughout these years, Wheelis's long-suffering mother takes care of her husband until his death at age 43. I thought this part of the book--Wheelis's boyhood and young adulthood, and his emotionally incestuous relationship with his mother, who became increasingly dependent on him--was interesting.

As the book progresses, it becomes apparent that Wheelis, now an old man, was never able to overcome the cruelty inflicted on him by his father, and the resulting emotional damage it caused. He's unable to just let go and fully live his life. Even though he loves his wife and children, there's a part of him that remains aloof and distant. He's like a modern Prometheus, a would-be bearer of fire and light, forever chained to the rock of his past as the rapacious ghost of his father tears at his liver. In the last part of the book, Wheelis's style of writing began to grate on my nerves, as did his repetitious, pessimistic musings. It reminded me of someone who longs to write the Great American Novel but lacks the creative talent and passion to pull it off. Eight out of eight Amazon readers gave this book a 5-star rating. I can give it only 3-stars.