Psychoanalytic Memoirs

The first book-length study of the psychoanalytic memoir, this book examines key examples of the genre, including Sigmund Freud’s mistitled An Autobiographical Study, Helene Deutsch’s Confrontations with Myself: An Epilogue, Wilfred Bion’s War Memoirs 1917-1919, Masud Khan’s The Long Wait, Sophie Freud’s Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family, and Irvin D. Yalom and Marilyn Yalom’s A Matter of Death and Life. Offering in each chapter a brief character sketch of the memoirist, the book shows how personal writing fits into their other work, often demonstrating the continuities and discontinuities in an author’s life as well as discussing each author’s contributions to psychoanalysis, whether positive or negative.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Sigmund Freud: An Autobiographical Study 2. The Wolf-Man: Memoirs 3. Helene Deutsch: Confrontations with Myself: An Epilogue 4. Wilhelm Stekel: Autobiography 5. C.G. Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections 6. Wilfred R. Bion: War Memoirs 1917-1919 7. Marion Milner: On Not Being Able to Paint 8. M. Masud R. Khan: The Long Wait 9. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson: Final Analysis 10. F. Robert Rodman: Not Dying 11. Louis Breger: Psychotherapy Lives Intersecting 12. Brenda Webster: The Last Good Freudian 13. Madelon Sprengnether: Crying at the Movies 14. Sophie Freud: Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family Conclusion: Irvin D. Yalom and Marilyn Yalom: A Matter of Death and Life Works Cited Index

About the Author :
Jeffrey Berman is Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at the University at Albany, State University of New York, USA, where he has been teaching since 1973. He is the author or coauthor of more than 20 books, including Confidentiality and Its Discontents, coauthored with Paul Mosher, which received the 2017 Book Prize from the American Psychoanalytic Association, of which he is an Honorary Member. He was selected by the Princeton Review in 2012 as one of the country’s top 300 professors.

Review :
We live in the age of potted celebrity biographies. Each carefully structured to obfuscate rather than reveal. What happens in a world where emotional veracity is central and revealing it is the name of the game. In another brilliant book Jeffrey Berman reads a serious of autobiographies by major psychoanalysts, from Sigmund Freud through Wilfred Bion and Masud Khan to the Sigmund’s recently deceased granddaughter Sophie Freud. Berman reveals that even in such a world, the complexity of imaging one’s own life is devilishly hard work for the author, while Berman makes it easy work for the reader. A must read for all engaged in thinking about what our work reveals, like it or not, about ourselves.