ABSTRACT
The ‘analyst’ to whom I had gone for ‘cure’ said it would require about twelve sessions to dispel the anxiety from which I was suffering after my scholastic and athletic failures at Oxford. As I could muster the requisite fee for twelve sessions by using the remainder of my army gratuity, I took the plunge. In due course I exhausted my resources for the twelve sessions so I borrowed from a colleague (as he now was but who before the war had been my history master) and, since he was a kindly man, my ‘analyst’, who allowed me to accumulate a debt. It was in the course of being ‘analysed’ that I had been sacked from my job, sacked by my extremely beautiful fiancée, and was well on the way to failing to get medically qualified also. The debts amounted to about £70 to my analyst and £30 to my colleague. The sum of £100 was truly terrifying to me in my parlous state; in contrast to my finances, the acquisition of a fund of failure seemed to be inexhaustible. So I stopped my attempts to be cured.
