ABSTRACT
It has become a truism to maintain that most physicians, and all psychiatrists, can benefit professionally from some familiarity with the world of fiction. The works of such major artists as Balzac, Dickens, Shakespeare, and Ibsen, and those of many lesser writers, contain a host of characters depicting various morbid states of mind encountered in clinical practice. For this reason they illustrate, and often supersede, most textbooks of abnormal psychology and psychopathology.
