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FROM TARZAN TO JANE IN ONE EASY (?) LESSON * A PERSONAL HISTORY *

I have read many medical case histories of TVs but I have yet to find one which I can recognize as similar to my own, Therefore I am putting to paper my own life as best I can, with the hope that others may see similarities in their own lives, and thus can perhaps answer to some extent the question which we all ask ourselves again and again, "Why am I as I am?"

I came of parents of quite literate backgrounds and grew up in modest circumstances. Both parents were warm, loving and understanding. Far from having the typical dominant mother and submissive father so often encountered in TV histories, if any thing the opposite was the case. My father, kind and loving though he was, rather dominated the house.

However, there was one way in which he was not understand ing Although I was very slight of build, my father constantly impressed upon me the importance of not running away from fights with my foes however outclassed I might be. Even if I were in- capable of "dishing it out", I could at least demonstrate my manliness by grimly sticking it out--the "head bloody but un- bowed" type of thing I was warned that if I ever fled from a fight I would receive far worse from my father than from my foe. Thus my childhood was full of conflicts--my father, whom I adored, had thrust me out in a world filled with battles which I could seldom win, but from which I could not flee. Ry nature and training I was unaggressive and introspective, and I found my father's tests of manliness almost impossibly difficult, and wished at times I were a girl--for as such I could win my fath- er's love without having to meet his standards of manliness.

By the age of ten, I had begun to escape into fantasies.

I evolved day-dreams in which I could aquit myself in a fully masculine manner, which would win the approval of my father. The one day-dream which I recall most thoroughtly and which was acted out most completely was asfollows:

I would lie in bed at night and imagine myself to be Tarzan, King of the Juggle, rescuing girls from impossible situations