Much has been written about the lives of male physician psychoanalysts, but little has been recorded about their wives and families who travel with them through their long medical training experience. In Memoir of a Psychoanalyst’s Wife, author Jane Linker Schwartz offers a look at her life and how psychoanalysis helped shape her during the twentieth century. As a nonagenarian and part-time psychotherapist, her long life reaches back to 1925. Schwartz lived through the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the aftermath of those turbulent years. During the 1960s and 1970s, she was a young, white, middle-class American woman married to a psychiatrist-psychoanalyst. Her collected memories throughout the years are mixed with a strong flavor of the history of American psychoanalysis. While sharing Schwartz’ personal story, this memoir also chronicles the changes that took place in the twentieth century when the Women’s Movement questioned the role of the traditional wife and mother as it was affected by professional ambitions outside the home. It examines competition between married partners regarding professional status and whose work was more important. It also traces changes in women’s behavior toward home responsibilities and children.
Looking Back is the unusual memoir of a senior figure in the international psychoanalytic community. Dr. Paul Ornstein was one of the small and distinguished group of Holocaust survivors/physicians who came to the U.S. after the second world war and became prominent in American psychoanalysis. His memoir traces his route from a small town in Hungary, to Budapest’s Neolog Rabbinical Seminary, to a Hungarian forced labor battalion, through medical school in post-war Heidelberg to the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he became a prominent professor of psychiatry and a leader of the psychoanalytic Self Psychology movement. “How does one begin to identify and evaluate a well-lived life? I thought again of this question as I read Paul Ornstein’s lovely and surprisingly profound memoir titled simply Looking Back: Memoir of a Psychoanalyst. If you want to know what a life well lived looks like, read this book... Ornstein, all of his personal and professional accomplishments and contributions notwithstanding, possesses an endearing humility. Its tone colors the memoir... For entrée into a life history that spans the great events of the last century, that charts the growth and development of psychoanalysis into a humanistic and humane endeavor, and that depicts a life very well lived, I commendLooking Back: Memoir of a Psychoanalyst.” — Joye Weisel-Barth, International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology “Paul Ornstein's remarkable life has taken him from a cheder in a Hungarian town, to the Budapest Rabbinical Seminary through the Holocaust, to the summit of his psychoanalytic profession. This memoir tells this story in vivid and often moving fashion, including his dazed, postwar search for surviving family members, the tenderness of his romance and reunion with his beloved wife and collaborator Anna, their improbable postwar study of medicine among former Nazis at Heidelberg, his use of hypnosis to cure a paralyzed aide to a legendary congressman, to his development, along with Anna, into a towering figure in self-psychology. Paul, who has been fortunate to have Helen Epstein as his co-author, enriches the book by using his penetrating insight to analyze his own motivations and foibles, and those of colleagues and teachers. The reader comes away astonished by how Paul was able to transcend trauma and retain a spirited delight in living and a lifelong sense of optimism.” —Joseph Berger, veteran reporter, The New York Times and author, Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust. “In this memoir, Paul Ornstein describes his remarkable and moving personal, historical and professional life journey, losing many family members, his community, and his country in the Shoah, yet being blessed from the beginning with a resilient optimism and clear-eyed certainty about what he can accomplish and who and what matters to him: family first and foremost, friends, community and identity, and being a psychoanalyst. Looking Back, including photos and accounts of Ornstein’s close relationship with his long-lived survivor father, with Michael Balint, and with Hans Kohut, could be called ‘My Father’s Culture’. It serves as companion volume to his beloved Anna’s My Mother’s Eyes.” — Dr. Nancy J. Chodorow, Author, The Power of Feelings, Individualizing Gender and Sexuality and other works; Professor of Sociology Emerita, University of California, Berkeley; Lecturer on Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. “Paul Ornstein was one of the psychoanalysts who came to the U.S. from Europe after the second world war and became a central figure in American psychoanalysis. He and his wife Anna have made an essential contribution to establishing Heinz Kohut’s self psychology as an important part of our pluralistic psychoanalytic world. The book is a portrait of a fine psychoanalyst and a fine human being.” — Dr. Arnold Richards, Editor InternationalPsychoanalysis.net, Publisher ipbooks.net, Former editor JAPA. “It is rare for a psychoanalyst of Paul Ornstein’s generation and stature to share his personal and professional history. Dr. Ornstein’s story is unique and, fluently written with journalist Helen Epstein, provides a way for mental health professionals and lay people alike to learn how one can overcome apocalyptic trauma. Students of psychoanalytic history will get a window onto the Hungarian tradition that stretches from Ferenczi to Balint to Ornstein as well as the politics of the American psychoanalytic community, chiefly in Cincinnati and Chicago. Dr. Ornstein’s story demonstrates how determination, perseverance and love can conquer all.” — Dr. Eva Fogelman, author of Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaustand co-producer of Breaking the Silence: The Generation After the Holocaust. “Looking Back is, like its author, direct, without frills, but leaves the reader thinking about some of the Big Questions. And like the story of Passover, Paul Ornstein's story is one that demands telling and retelling.” — Lester Lenoff, MSW, LCSW, Consulting Editor, Psychoanalytic Inquiry; Editorial Board, The International Journal of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. “As a survivor, Paul Ornstein is a model of resilience, turning his Shoah experience into a lesson in living. As a psychoanalyst, he was able to distance himself from ‘ego psychology’ and to acknowledge, under the influence of Kohut, the clinical importance of empathy, an evolution that had numerous equivalents in other countries, and especially in France. The result is an important book, both moving and intellectually challenging.” — Dr. Rachel Rosenblum, Paris Psychoanalytic Society, Recipient of the 2013 Hayman Award. “This memoir conveys one man's experience of the Holocaust and how he was able to reconstruct a life after the war. Uniquely, it also gives us a feel for what was a seismic event in analytic circles in the 20th century, the birth and growth of Self Psychology. From horror to empathy, not a bad journey to read about in a short, succinct book.” —Dr. Michael Rosenbluth, FRCPC Chief, Department of Psychiatry, Toronto East General Hospital, Associate Professor, University of Toronto. “This memoir is a gem, rich and deeply personal as well as a chronicle of a remarkable life lived during a remarkable time. And those photos! They are stunning.” — Dr. James Fisch, Editorial Board, International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology.
Psychoanalysis was her family’s religion—instead of wafers and wine, there were Seconals, Nembutals, and gin. Baptized into the faith at fourteen, Melissa Knox endured her analyst’s praise of her childlike, victimized mother—who leaned too close, ate off Melissa’s plate, and thought “pedophile” meant “silly person.” Gaslighted with the notions that she’d seduced her father, failed to masturbate, and betrayed her mother, Melissa shouldered the blame. Her story of a family pulled into and torn apart by psychoanalysis exposes the abuse inherent in its authoritarianism as Melissa learns, with a startling sense of humor and admirable chagrin, that divorcing Mom is sometimes the least crazy thing to do.
Now in paperback, one of the first books to help navigate the profound emotional challenges of caring for elderly parents in a strained parent-child relationship.
Have you ever wondered what a therapist really thinks? Have you ever wondered if a therapist truly cares about her patients? Have you tried to imagine the unimaginable, the loss of the person most dear to you? Is it true that `tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all? ` Love and loss are a ubiquitous part of life, bringing the greatest joys and the greatest heartaches. In one way or another all relationships end. People leave, move on, die. Loss is an ever-present part of life. In Love and Loss, Linda B. Sherby illustrates that in order to grow and thrive, we must learn to mourn, to move beyond the person we have lost while taking that person with us in our minds. Love, unlike loss, is not inevitable but, she argues, no satisfying life can be lived without deeply meaningful relationships. The focus of Love and Loss is how patients' and therapists' independent experiences of love and loss, as well as the love and loss that they experience in the treatment room, intermingle and interact. There are always two people in the consulting room, both of whom are involved in their own respective lives, as well as the mutually responsive relationship that exists between them. Love and loss in the life of one of the parties affects the other, whether that affect takes place on a conscious or unconscious level. Love and Loss is unique in two respects.The first is its focus on the analyst's current life situation and how that necessarily affects both the patient and the treatment. The second is Sherby's willingness to share the personal memoir of her own loss which she has interwoven with extensive clinical material to clearly illustrate the effect the analyst's current life circumstance has on the treatment. Writing as both a psychoanalyst and a widow, Linda B. Sherby makes it possible for the reader to gain an inside view of the emotional experience of being an analyst, making this book of interest to a wide audience. Professionals from psychoanalysts and psychotherapists and bereavement specialists through students in all the mental health fields to the public in general, will resonate and learn from this heartfelt and straightforward book.
This book examines the ways in which we make use of the Group Relations model, set up in the experimental field of the Group Relations conferences, to understand and modify the functioning of working groups. It is based on a psychoanalytic knowledge of the psychosocial development of human beings.
This is a rare autobiographical history written from the center of the inner circle of psychoanalysis. Today, only a few psychoanalysts remain who have Dr. Rangell's unique, insider's view of the last half century of psychoanalytic history. His close associations with the major contributors to theory during this time permit him to chronicle the constant marriage of people and ideas that has been the hallmark of the psychoanalytic community over the previous decades. His insights are enhanced by his leadership role across the spectrum of psychoanalytic organizations (local, national, and international) that has allowed him to witness and participate in the great debates of our time. Written as Dr. Rangell approached the age of 90, this chronicle possesses the same clarity and incisiveness that has always characterized Rangell's writing. He is still the tough-minded thinker ready to challenge the fuzzy thinking that threatens to split psychoanalysis into factions. In this work, Dr. Rangell gives us his valuable perspective on the significant individuals in psychoanalysis and their ideas: from the early dissension of the 20s and 30s to the war years, to the "golden years" of the 50s and early 60s where complications in the field manifested in the splitting of Institutes. He goes on to cover the turmoil surrounding the theoretical debates of the 70s, followed by his look at the attempt at pluralism in the 80s, the eclecticism of the 90s, and finishing with a discussion of the discipline as it is now. Then, using his own prodigious contributions to the great debates of our time, Dr. Rangell fuses divisive views into a unitary theory of psychoanalysis. This composite theory offers an amalgamated view that provides coherence in place of the fragmentation, personal warring, and disarray that constitutes the present state of psychoanalysis.
The intimate, touching, witty, and unique memoir by a renowned psychoanalytic author and clinician who discovers the unexpected site of the most beautiful place in the world. This riveting memoir tells the tale of how the roots of one woman's yearnings, planted deeply in fertile dreams and disappointments, sprouted fresh possibilities, leafed out page by page and blossomed into a colorful and enduring romance. The author, a retired American psychoanalyst from Los Angeles, recognized for her many clinical publications, chronicles four years that fluttered by like autumn foliage into mounds of flashbacks upon an existence often blown off track and swept up as if by a gust of wind at surprising times and in unexpected directions. Following a sequence of sundry seasons and throughout broad and narrow ups and downs, the author settles not only in that most beautiful place that is the scintillating city of Paris, but even more significantly in a crisp, enduring, and resilient state of mind, a sturdy foundation for living experienced as the most beautiful place in the world.
Bestselling writer and psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom puts himself on the couch in a “candid, insightful” (Abraham Verghese) memoir Irvin D. Yalom has made a career of investigating the lives of others. In this profound memoir, he turns his writing and his therapeutic eye on himself. He opens his story with a nightmare: He is twelve, and is riding his bike past the home of an acne-scarred girl. Like every morning, he calls out, hoping to befriend her, "Hello Measles!" But in his dream, the girl's father makes Yalom understand that his daily greeting had hurt her. For Yalom, this was the birth of empathy; he would not forget the lesson. As Becoming Myself unfolds, we see the birth of the insightful thinker whose books have been a beacon to so many. This is not simply a man's life story, Yalom's reflections on his life and development are an invitation for us to reflect on the origins of our own selves and the meanings of our lives.
“A thrilling story of seduction, betrayal, and loss, Freud’s Mistress will titillate fans of Memoirs of a Geisha and The Other Boleyn Girl.”—Booklist In fin-de-siècle Vienna, it was not easy for a woman to find fulfillment both intellectually and sexually. But many believe that Minna Bernays was able to find both with one man—her brother-in-law, Sigmund Freud. At once a portrait of two sisters—the rebellious, independent Minna and her inhibited sister, Martha—and of the compelling and controversial doctor who would be revered as one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers, Freud’s Mistress is a novel rich with passion and historical detail and “a portrait of forbidden desire [with] a thought-provoking central question: How far are you willing to go to be happy?”* *Publishers Weekly
