MOLLY WHITTINGTON-EGAN was born in Kent and educated at Nottingham High School GPDST. She won an Exhibition to Newnham College, Cambridge, where she read English. Later, she qualified as a solicitor. For a decade, she had invaluable experience of the old asylums, working up to Acting Head Social Worker at Springfield Hospital, south-west London. The three strands in her background - literary, legal, and psychological - show clearly in her analytical writings.