"At a time when slick, superficial, psychological works are foisted on the lay-public, Allen Wheelis has written a serious treatise."--San Francisco Sunday Examiner-Chronicle

Allen Wheelis starts from the premise that human beings do not know themselves because deception--including self-deception--is not only a strategy for survival, it is the basis of the social contract whereby man trades his individual freedom for the security of a tribe or state. Are we really motivated by ideals such as freedom, equality, and justice? In fact these are only distractions useful to the state, which demands conscience of us but is itself above all moral constraints, seeking only power. Were we to understand or dwell on our individual mortality, we would not be willing to make the necessary sacrifices or participate in the bloody business of the group. This unsparing map of the human condition is presented in hypnotic prose and illustrated by vivid fictional narratives. Unsparing as it is, the book finds its way to an episode of transcendent love, for this too is part of the way we are.

The story begins with his parents' life of poverty in rural Texas. When Wheelis was a small boy, his father contracted tuberculosis. He spent several years dying, exercising a tyrannical control over his family. In one searing scene, Wheelis is made to cut the lawn with a razor, a task that occupies every day of his summer. Timidity, insecurity and a cloyingly close connection to his mother mark Wheelis' efforts to establish himself in the adult world. When trying to write a novel as a young man, he falls mysteriously ill. Eventually he realizes that he has "made" himself ill so that his failure to write can be excused. This perception leads him to the study of medicine and eventually psychiatry. As Wheelis turns his explanatory lens on the dark corners of his own life, we come to understand how a gift for analysis--like a gift for prophecy--brings little comfort to its possessor and no guarantee of happiness.