INVISIBLE MASTERS

More well-told, insightful narratives from the files of psychotherapist Weinberg (Nearer to the Heart's Desire, 1992, etc.). Weinberg's present subject is compulsions—habits whose special function, he says, is to keep some horrifying idea from becoming conscious. Here, he offers novella-like case histories in which patients come to him with deep-rooted problems that he carefully and skillfully probes, uncovering the repressed fears underlying them. For some sufferers, compulsion manifests in a single activity: Jonathan, a young, unathletic math teacher, feels powerfully driven to secretly make foul shots in his school's basketball gym; Timothy, an aging lawyer, risks everything to spy on his young mistress. For others, the compulsion becomes a way of life: Martin, a truly nasty man for whom money is a monomania, denies all others access to him; similarly, Marianne, the unhappy wife of a Freudian psychoanalyst, compulsively avoids intimacy. Sandwiched between each of these tales are essays on the nature of compulsion; the relation of obsessions to compulsions; the Freudian view of the psyche versus the Weinberg view; how compulsions differ from ordinary habits; and how to break compulsions. To accomplish the latter, Weinberg offers a program that involves identifying the compulsion; stopping it temporarily in order to decipher its function; asking and answering the right questions about one's fears; and, finally, stopping the now-understood compulsive behavior for good. According to the author, this procedure can be carried out alone, in therapy, or with a self-help group. Perhaps so, but the case histories Weinberg relates indicate that the active help of a skilled therapist is invaluable. Rich character studies, plus lucid explanations of psychological concepts.