A sprawling, unwieldy and uneven work.
The great-grandson of James Jackson Putnam explores the relationship between his ancestor and Freud, as revealed in family archives, in published correspondence and other writings by the principals and in existing biographies and commentaries.
Debut author Prochnik begins with a rather imaginative description of the arrival of the Viennese psychoanalyst and his colleagues, Sandor Ferenczi and Carl Jung, at Putnam’s Adirondack retreat in September 1909. Clearly out of his element in this rustic setting, where an earnest athleticism prevailed, Freud, who had just delivered his famous series of lectures on psychoanalysis at Clark University, was nevertheless eager to spread his ideas to America, and Putnam, a prominent Boston psychologist who was disenchanted with the professional practice of psychology in America, was just the man to help him do it. After their brief time together at the retreat, Freud returned to Vienna, and Putnam to Boston, where he set up his clinic as a psychoanalytic laboratory, started a program of self-analysis and began writing and lecturing widely on Freud’s ideas. The two men met again in Europe in 1911, when Freud gave Putnam a brief, intense analysis and Putnam delivered a paper at the Weimar Congress. They corresponded regularly, until Putnam’s death in 1918. The time at Putnam Camp occupies a tiny part of this dense and overwritten account, but it is the most enjoyable, vivid portion. Prochnik tries to render Putnam, the upstanding New England blue blood, interesting by revealing his long relationship with a female ex-patient—was it or wasn’t it an affair?—but the intellectual debate between Freud and Putnam is heavy going. Putnam, who had faith in God and in the good will of humanity, argued (while Freud skillfully resisted) the idea that psychoanalysis should be linked with a philosophical system and with a particular set of ethical values. Prochnik argues that Putnam’s influence is still felt today, e.g., in the popularity of M. Scott Peck’s blend of theology and psychology. Somewhat outside Prochnik’s purported scope and covered extensively by other writers are Freud’s differences with his European colleagues in the psychoanalytic movement; nevertheless, they are discussed here at considerable length.
A sprawling, unwieldy and uneven work.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2006
ISBN: 1-59051-182-4
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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