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TALES FROM A TRAVELING COUCH

Name: TALES FROM A TRAVELING COUCH
Author: Robert U. Akeret
ISBN: 0-393-03779-7

by Robert U. Akeret ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1995

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A fascinating memoir that helps laypeople understand the therapeutic process. Veteran psychotherapist Akeret (Photoanalysis, 1973, etc.) introduces five former patients, including a Jewish woman who is intent on remaking herself into a Spanish flamenco dancer; a man in love with a polar bear who literally wants to consummate the relationship; and a very gifted, if highly narcissistic and promiscuous, French writer who, when the author visits him after many years, reveals that he intends to make his suicide the subject of his last novel. In recalling his work with these five, Akeret reveals a great deal about his humanistic and existential approach to psychotherapy—one of his teachers was Erich Fromm—and illustrates how often it requires verbal restraint so that the practitioner may enter the patient's emotional and imaginative worlds. At other times, however, Akeret uses intuition and countertransference (the therapist's deepest emotional responses to the patient) to make unconventional, sometimes startling, interventions. With the polar bear's lover, this includes accompanying the patient to the circus cage where the object of his adoration dwells. Does psychotherapy ``work''?—i.e., make better the lives of individuals who often have invested enormous emotional energy and pain, not to mention money, in it? Akeret vaguely reports that of the five patients, three ``generally feel much better''; two don't. His sample is obviously too small for these results to be meaningful, and therapy is in any case more an art practiced between two idiosyncratic individuals than a science. Also, as Akeret rightly notes, there may be a values conflict between what the therapist thinks the patient needs and what the latter wants. Like Irvin Yalom's Love's Executioner, which it resembles, this book takes readers into the interpersonal nuances and occasional drama of psychotherapy—and into the human comedy—in a colorful, accessible, insightful way.

Pub Date: June 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-393-03779-7

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995

Categories:

PSYCHOLOGY

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THE CULTURE OF SHAME

by Andrew P. Morrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1996

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A ponderous, touchy-feely examination of shame, its causes, and its role in the psychotherapeutic process. While psychoanalyst Morrison (Harvard Medical School) still holds Freud dear, he diverges sharply with his contention that shame—not sex and guilt—lies at the root of most neuroses. Whether the malaise is depression, mania, or feelings of rage, Morrison believes it's usually shame that's to blame. And behind shame, the cause of it all is those most reprehensible of villains, parents, who fail to respond in ways that give a child a sense of self-worth. Society is also guilty of causing shame—through general attitudes toward poverty, race, aging, etc. According to Morrison, the psychoanalyst's job (though you can also try this at home on your own, he notes) is to unmask shame in all its guises, trace its origins, and then help the patient either discuss the shame or develop alternative sources of self-esteem. Some psychoanalysts, such as Stuart Schneiderman in his Saving Face: The Politics of Shame and Guilt (published last month), argue that shame can actually speed the psychoanalytic process, and Carl Goldberg (see p. 194) believes shame can lead to self- understanding. But Morrison can see no good in it. For although shame is sometimes warranted or ``deserved,'' although it helps to preserve civility and social cohesion, Morrison prefers the high road of blind self-affirmation and cosseting the inner child. But beyond the merely anecdotal (cases drawn from his practice), the author offers nothing approaching scientific proof for any of these assertions. Even his case studies are too brief and superficial to make his point.

Pub Date: April 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-345-37484-3

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996

Categories:

PSYCHOLOGY

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I.D.

HOW TEMPERAMENT AND EXPERIENCE CREATE THE INDIVIDUAL

by Winifred Gallagher ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1996

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An unwieldy assemblage of information on the varied elements- -from genes to neurotransmitters to early life experiences—that are believed to contribute to personality. Science writer Gallagher (The Power of Place, 1993) has assembled but not digested a huge amount of information on the complementary roles of nature and nurture in forming our individual identities. Her book centers on a woman identified as Monica. Monica was studied from her sensually deprived infancy (when an esophageal defect necessitated tube feeding and a depressed mother neglected her) and on into her unpredictably happy, successful adulthood—a success psychologists say is due to an inborn temperamental gift that we might call charisma. Pursuing this and many other studies (but without sourcing them), Gallagher brings out a particularly interesting point: that research has found nature and nurture to be linked in a two-way relationship. For instance, experience can actually change neurotransmitter patterns in the brain; conversely, our inborn temperament can influence what kinds of experiences we have. But Gallagher lacks a strong framework or point of view; she roams all over the psychological map, from memory to the unconscious to the artistic temperament. Too often, she gives an on-the-one-hand/on-the-other summary of the facts that leads to no conclusion other than the fairly useless one often repeated to her by researchers: We still don't know how much our genes and our environment contribute respectively to our selves. Further, she relies heavily on models that measure temperament on a range of axes, such as extroversion and agreeableness. But while Gallagher protests how complex personality is, this theory sounds like a simplistic building-block approach: Mr. X may have a large dose of extroversion, a touch of irritability, etc. Researchers recently announced the identification of a gene they say influences temperament. Only the future will tell us what Gallagher unfortunately can't.