The Fifth Principle is a piece of literature that takes as its subject aspects of the author's life between birth and eight years of age. However, it is by no means a conventional memoir or account of childhood. As a result, it would be misleading to think of it as autobiography or the case history of an individual. The writer and the individual written about are not the same person. It is a work that furnishes a penetrating account of the methods of a mind in its efforts to prevail in oppressive circumstances at a time of great vulnerability. One might say that the author has...