Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession

Description

The process known as psychoanalysis is sometimes revered, sometimes derided, and most often misunderstood. What good does it do? Can it help anyone? What risks does it pose to both patient and analyst? None of these questions can be easily answered, but in Janet Malcolm's narrative, in which all her skills as a reporter and interviewer come into play, their complexity is limpidly revealed.

Reviews

"Janet Malcolm has managed somehow to peer into the reticent, reclusive world of psychoanalysis and to report to us, with remarkable fidelity, what she has seen. When I began reading I thought condescendingly, 'She will get the facts right, and everything else wrong.' She does gets the facts right, but far more impressive, she has been able to capture and convey the claustral atmosphere of the profession. Her book is journalism become art." -- Joseph Adelson, The New York Times Book Review

"Miss Malcolm asks the questions that every patient has ever wanted to ask but knew it was hopeless...More momentous still, Miss Malcolm's questions get answers." -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

"Malcolm provides an elegant, precise summary of the history and development of Freud's ideas...She has drawn a provocative portrait of one physician in Freud's impossible profession." -- Jean Strouse, Newsweek

"Her treatment of the subject is original, rich and will reward anyone interested in the science or business of changing minds." -- E. James Lieberman, The Washington Post Book World

Author description

Janet Malcolm's books include Reading Chekhov, In the Freud Archives, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes and The Journalist and the Murderer. Born in Prague, she grew up in New York, where she now lives.