Zelda was diagnosed abroad by the distinguished Dr. Bleuler as a schizophrenic. She herself thought Dr. Bleuler “a great imbecile,” but we have little reason to imagine other physicians would have been more moderate or hopeful in their predictions. Her mental confusion was sometimes alarming; she suffered, on occasion, disorientation, hallucinations, great fears and depressions, even to the point of a number of suicide attempts. But these low periods could not have been other than transitory because her letters throughout her illness are much too lucid, controlled, alive with feeling and painful awareness. She showed eccentricities, shifts of mood, odd smiles, nightmares, withdrawals, obsessive behavior — at times. At the same time, and much more to the point, is the lucidity, the almost unbearable suffering over her condition and her full recognition of it — and the most important and moving thing, an extraordinary zeal and strenuous effort to get well, be real, to function — above all to work at something. The latter desperate need is an astonishing desire and hope for one who had been a great beauty, who was the wife of a famous man, and who had lived a life of spectacular indulgence, along with feminine expectations of protection and love.