A sensitive biography of a woman whose emotional and intellectual strengths were the ballast of her marriage and family.
The making of two psychoanalysts: Carl Jung and his loyal, ever supportive wife.
When she was 17, Emma Rauschenbach, the quiet, shy daughter of an “unimaginably wealthy” Swiss business magnate, met the impoverished medical student Carl Jung (1875-1961). Already engaged to a young man from her own class, she refused Jung’s first proposal of marriage. But eventually, encouraged by her mother, she was won over by her handsome, intelligent, boisterous, and persistent suitor. Award-winning documentary producer Clay (Trautmann’s Journey: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup Legend, 2010, etc.) tries to push Emma to the center of this sympathetic, carefully researched biography, but Emma’s volatile, difficult husband intrudes, resulting in a portrait of a troubled marriage and the rivalrous beginnings of psychoanalysis. Clay diagnoses Jung’s neurosis as a kind of split personality: a “loud, opinionated, energetic Steam-Roller” Personality 1 alternated with Personality 2, a depressed, neurotic, “inferior wretch” who flew into inexplicable rages; withdrew from family life (the Jungs had five children); and was haunted by disturbing dreams. Confronting her husband’s dramatic mood swings was one challenge for Emma; another was his conviction that infidelity was a requirement for a good marriage. Clay chronicles many “infatuations,” including notorious liaisons with two deeply unstable patients: Sabina Spielrein and Toni Wolff. Wolff came to live with the Jungs, with Emma’s acquiescence, serving as Carl’s “anima figure.” Spielrein, Wolff, and Emma herself became analysts, demonstrating the fluid nature of professionalism in early psychoanalysis. Clay maintains that Emma’s close involvement in her husband’s work provided her analytical training. As is well-known, Freud first considered Jung to be his heir, but Jung came to reject Freud’s views and, to Emma’s dismay, broke off their relationship. “So we are rid of them at last,” Freud wrote to a colleague, “the brutal holy Jung and his pious parrots.” Emma forged her own friendship with Freud, often sharing her analysis of her husband and herself.
A sensitive biography of a woman whose emotional and intellectual strengths were the ballast of her marriage and family.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-224512-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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
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