The Cure for Love

In Seabaugh’s debut novel, a psychotherapist crosses an ethical line while working with a patient engaged to a volatile woman.

Dr. Jack Cochran isn’t just an experienced psychotherapist; he’s also the author of a best-selling self-help book, Winning at the Game of Love. But his success with love is only on paper; his marriage failed six years ago. Still, he remains hopeful of future possibilities and confident that he can help his many tormented patients. Then he starts treating Andrew, a genuine, empathetic guy with an unstable, damaged fiancee—a woman not unlike Jack’s ex-wife. Jack is haunted by the many parallels between his and Andrew’s stories; while Andrew presses on to save his relationship, Jack gave up on his. The doctor’s unraveling emotions lead to a deceit that could cost him his career. Seabaugh, a psychologist himself, devotes much of the story to analysis, philosophical debates and internal monologues about love: its intensity, its challenges, and its ability to heal and to wound. The narrative gets quite heavy at times, with very few lighter interludes, and every character in the book—Jack, his ex-wife, even his landlady-with-benefits—talks like a therapist. “Cynicism is the greatest denial of love’s possibilities and the greatest defense against the awareness of our own failure,” says Jack as he accuses his pal of “giving up on love.” Readers interested in psychotherapy will appreciate the behind-the-desk point of view. Skeptics, meanwhile, will appreciate a secondary question that the plot brings forward: Is the mission of psychotherapy plausible? The inevitable confrontation at the end is disappointingly anticlimactic, and there are a few too many typos. That said, Seabaugh is a skillful writer, and readers are likely to empathize with Jack’s decisions, good and bad.

An intense psychological dissection of love.