Fifteen all-too-brief case studies that show how abusive or emotionally neglectful father figures can permanently scar their children's lives. British psychotherapist and feminist Sayers (Mothers of Psychoanalysis, 1991) claims convincingly that ``we are all at risk of succumbing to imagined images of menas patriarch or phallus, monster or idolsustained by the harmful childhood fixations, acted-out rebellion and inward defenses my tales describe.'' The people she analyzes range from a compulsively and joylessly sexual Don Juan to a psychologically self-emasculating ``wimp,'' from a woman who so rigorously denies any male presence in her life that she is convinced her child is the result of a virgin birth to several women who repeatedly become involved with abusive men as a paradoxical way of trying to overcome disenchantment with the male sex. Sayers frames her tales with brief, usually illuminating Freudian analyses; she views her book as a corrective to the excessive emphasis laid on the child's relation with the mother by most British neo-Freudians (e.g., Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and Wilfred Bion). Yet she overstates her case, ignoring in particular the influences of classsurprisingly so, given the dreary near-uniformity of her subjects, almost all of whom are socially isolated, lower-middle-class English men and women with limited education and little psychological self-awareness. Perhaps for these reasons, Sayers's attempts at helping them improve distorted, unhappy lives usually seem brief and ineffectual. And because her subjects' pain is not always reducible to Freudian and feminist terms, the book's subtitle seems contrived and the author's approach of less value than one that would take socioeconomic factors into account. Fascinating stories, but told with a reductionist analysis.
Pub Date: Aug. 2, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-04557-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
So good, so vitally important, but so . . . depressing.
A reader’s guide to depression, hopelessly bleak yet heartbreakingly real.
In this massive tome, Solomon (A Stone Boat, 1994, etc.) confronts the terrors of depression with a breadth both panoramic and precise. The 12 tersely titled chapters (“Depression,” “Breakdowns,” “Treatments,” “Alternatives,” “Populations,” “Addiction,” “Suicide,” “History,” “Poverty,” “Politics,” “Evolution,” and “Hope”) address with spectacular clarity the ways in which depression steals lives away, leaving its prey bereft of their very selves. Despite the occasional cliché (“Life is fraught with sorrows”) and heavy metaphor (“Grief is a humble angel”), Solomon’s prose illuminates a dark topic through the unfolding tales of his sources and his own life story; by allowing the voices of those who battle depression to speak, rich and varied pictures of daily struggle, defeat, and triumph ultimately emerge. The author deserves kudos as well both for the geographical span of his account (which ranges from Senegal to Greenland) and for its historical sweep (which begins with Hippocrates and continues to the present). Paradoxically, the completeness of Solomon’s vision undermines his readability: so much suffering fills these pages that, at times, it’s all a bit too much darkness. (The gruesome litany of suicide techniques, for example, seems gratuitous.) Nevertheless, the importance of the work becomes virtually self-evident when Solomon addresses such topics as the cultural denial of depression, masculine fears of seeking treatment, strengths and weaknesses of various treatments, the salutary effect of diet and exercise on depression, the high cost of treatment, and chronic depression among the elderly. Fortunately the final chapter is “Hope”—for the reader will certainly be in need of some after the marathon of gloom.
So good, so vitally important, but so . . . depressing.Pub Date: June 12, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-85466-X
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
A scholarly, demanding work—aptly described by its author as a ``strange, unorthodox book''—that examines the complex interaction between psychotherapy and culture by placing American psychotherapy within the context of the nation's larger history. Cushman (History/California School of Professional Psychology), a psychotherapist in private practice in northern California, sees American psychotherapy as a cultural artifact rather than a universal truth. To understand it, he looks closely at its historical antecedents, economic components, and political consequences, examining the 19th-century world into which psychotherapy was born and then showing how it has developed since 1900. The asylum movement, Freud's theories of the unconscious, mesmerism, and the interpersonal psychiatry of Harry Stack Sullivan are all covered. However, Cushman pays closest attention to the theories of Melanie Klein, asserting that her ideas about the inborn psychic structure of the self paved the way for new psychoanalytic theories emphasizing self-development and freedom that conformed to the social trends of the second half of the 20th century. The author argues that the post-World War II era has been marked by a pervasive sense of personal emptiness and a commitment to self-liberation through consumerism. While psychotherapy's role is to treat the unhappy effects of this emptiness, Cushman believes that its philosophy of individualism and emphasis on the self have in fact reinforced consumerism. The task now, he says, is to replace this solipsistic configuration with a new, socially cooperative and morally superior one, and he urges psychotherapists to become actively involved in this process. To promote the necessary dialogue, Cushman includes an appendix describing some of the many alternative configurations of the self that have existed during the past 2,500 years of Western civilization. A deeply moral work that engages, informs, and persuades- -recommended to anyone concerned about the evolving American psyche.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-201-62643-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
© Copyright 2026 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.
