In an imaginative, insightful, learned collaboration, novelist Appignanesi (Memory and Desire, 1991) and historian of science Forrester (Cambridge Univ.) present Freud's female relatives, patients, friends, disciples, and colleagues; their contributions to his work; and their actual and symbolic roles in his life. Although little is known of Freud's family life (the information still carefully guarded in the Freud Archives), the psychoanalytic ``family,'' tied by powerful ``transferential bonds,'' is well documented but often misunderstood. It is in dispelling some of the myths about Freud's work (particularly about castration anxiety and penis envy), about the women he encountered and his attitude toward them and toward the feminine in general (e.g., his reputed misogyny) that this book is most successful. In spite of the patronizing title, the women themselves are represented with their own character and integrity intact. All of them—patients such as ``Dora,'' disciples such as daughter Anna Freud, friends such as Lou Andreas-SalomÇ—were creative allies in Freud's work, guides and mediators carrying his ideas, theories, even his mistakes into new territories with their writings and their organizations: Marie Bonaparte in France, Alix Strachey in England, Ruth Mack Brunswick and Muriel Gardner in America. As for Freud himself, the ``demonized'' and the ``idealized'' psychiatrist are replaced here with a humanized male figure, with all his insecurity revealed—especially through the King Lear analogy that appears throughout the text. To those familiar with Freud: a fresh and perhaps controversial interpretation, as well as a tribute to the women who helped create him. For others: an absorbing if somewhat biased introduction to the canon and archetypes that helped shape modern ideas about human development and sexuality.
Pub Date: Jan. 6, 1993
ISBN: 0-465-02563-3
Page Count: 588
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
