Allen Wheelis was a psychoanalyst and writer who lived in San Francisco, CA. He achieved renown and success with his psychoanalytic practice, which spanned five decades despite the fact that he expressed ambivalence and doubt about the field and his own work in it. Wheelis died on June 14, 2007 at the age of 91 in a San Francisco hospital after receiving back surgery.
The Writer
Allen Wheelis succeeded as a writer. Over a period of five decades, he crafted a series of novels while also writing a substantial body of wide-ranging works that has gone on to influence students and the educated public alike. He wrote prolifically, authoring 14 books including novels and memoirs, as well as several pieces for Commentary, the New Yorker, and various professional journals. Many of Wheelis's writings have been acclaimed by critics. His writings are typified by a profound philosophical pessimism, and "drew heavily from his experiences as both a doctor and a man hobbled by neuroses". However, his wife Ilse Wheelis is not alone in pointing out that though Wheelis "had a pessimistic outlook on the human condition... he also celebrated it. He believed people could find happiness".
A story that appeared in Wheelis's nonfiction book, published in 1966, was the basis of John Korty's film The Crazy-Quilt. Wheelis's essay "Spirit" was included in Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett's 1981 collection The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul. In his book, How People Change: Freedom & Necessity, published in 1975, Wheelis describes in the detail a very defining story about his relationship with his father. The author states that these childhood events not only caused his writing but also what he writes and the conclusions he comes to. He sees in this the determinism he wants to destroy and asks how to get free of it.
Quotes
“One can often recognize herd animals by their tendency to carry bibles”. “The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change”. "Desire is endless and unappeasable, is most intense where most forbidden, and is never far from despair”. “We must affirm freedom and responsibility without denying that we are the product of circumstance, and must affirm that we are the product of circumstance without denying that we have the freedom to transcend that causality to become something which could not even have been provisioned from the circumstances which shaped us”.
