Hy Male s t eria 183 Jung, Abraham, and Ferenczi, Rivers had a restless and adventurous mind He had done kinship and He had ethnological research in Melanesia, and his social organization book on considered a classic in the is still participated in the neuropsychologist field Henry Head's controver- experiments on the nervous system, and the celebrated psycholog- sial laboratory he directed at Cambridge with Charles Myers trained a number of students who later achieved prominence 41 Rivers was also a teacher of legendary magnetism and charm Arnold Bennett, who met him through Sassoon after the war, described his study at St Johns College, crowded with devoted students: ical men who His manner to young seekers after wisdom, and to young were prepared astride to teach on the sofa and were touching, in the him a thing or two, was divine I have listened to dozens of these interviews eager crudity of the visitors, the sat They mature, suave, wide-sweeping sagacity and experience of the Director of Studies, and the fallacious but charming equality which the elder established and maintained between the two 42 When Sassoon met him, Rivers was fifty-three Many of his friends was not really until the war that Rivers found himself"; that through his work in treating psychoneuroses he achieved an emotional felt that "it fulfillment that bridge, had been missing and even in his stammerer since boyhood, and isolated in his laboratory research at teaching and anthropological He thought he had "almost no interest women." 44 in in dealing shocked own he drew on his Bennett for one Rivers's biographer, with the suffering of shell- suppressed emotions of love and nurturance A combination of experience, life-view, and manner made Rivers a source of wisdom and security to many shattered young men in the years 1915-19 Langdon-Brown, a wise and compassionate doctor himself, felt that this success was possible "because he had himself that he could heal others"; that in healing others, Rivers himself 45 A never married, and although his Richard Slobodin, suggests that officers, Cam- work 43 Sassoon, Rivers was reserved, lonely, like in his private life towards coeducation were progressive, attitudes field went it to heal might be suggested, conversely, far toward healing, that is, helping