FEEL FREE.

By David Viscott '59, M.D.New York: Peter H. Wylen, Inc., 1971.246 pp. $5.95.

The spirit of Walt Whitman singing a song of himself and of Rousseau trusting the heart as a better counselor than the head is strong enough today to make Dr. Viscott's book a financial success. In it are found what millions of golden-hearted men and women desire: Castles in Spain, rent free. If a woman, you may throw your pans and pots out of the window and take off for Málaga or Granada. If a man, you may thumb your nose at your boss and head for the wild and mountainous beauty of Tenerife and the Canary Islands where American cigarettes sell for $1.25 a carton and Scotch whisky for $3 a bottle. No problems: "You are the only person who controls your destiny in the world ..." "... The Boston Globe carried a story ... about a physician who left the world of exotic [meaning perhaps esoteric?] research to run away with a circus and become a clown. Look at all this happening right under your nose!"

it's not much good talking over marital problems with your wife or a love affair with your friend. They are products of killing conventions resulting in soul-crippling stupidities. So are a mother from whom a daughter seeks advice about marriage and a clergyman from whom a woman seeks advice about opening a dress shop against the desires of her husband who believes that a wife's and mother's place is centered in the home. Psychiatrists? They are "marvellous for telling fortunes backwards.... When it comes to telling the future, they are not much better than anyone else."

Crippling are guilty feelings inculcated in children by frustrated and desiccated parents, by robots slaving away in the mistaken belief that pleasure should be shunned, and by plutocrats feeding with acid indigestion on their material possessions. All are sterile products of treadmills and confining walls. Let yourself go. Laugh off restraints and make a joke of security.

Style? Dr. Viscott genially buttonholes his readers and relapses into folksy vernacular. Samples: (1) " . . . from time to time things get pretty lousy in every marriage.... When the dam breaks watch out! Okay, I hope we are all believers now, able to admit that every marriage has its problems, every job its bitches, every household its drudgery and lack of fulfilment." (2) "If you want to walk in the park with your shoes off and dangle them in a fountain as kids do, go do it. No one will even notice. Okay, maybe you can't spend all day there, but you can give up your luncheon hour for it. It wouldn't kill you to miss lunch. Or is this too big a change for you?"

The dust jacket identifies Dr. Viscott as a 33-year-old psychiatrist who feels free to follow his many interests and as President of Sensitivity Games, Inc., which manufactures psychological greeting cards expressing feelings most people cannot put into words ("The real you is so much more").

Only stupid squares will question Dr. Viscott's Rock-of-Gibraltar wisdom: "One thing you do better than anyone else in the world is to be you." With his Sensitivity Games and his Feel Free he titillates the vagabond hearts of American romantics. A reviewer has some difficulty in not feeling free to forecast lucrative successes in both ventures.