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May.12.2009 Freud was just plain wrong about sex Freud was just plain wrong about the sexual underpinnings of neurosis. I don't know why it took me so long to realize exactly how wrong. Today, sitting on my terrace in Rome reading Lou Breger's biography of Freud, I finally got it. What is strange is that I wrote a memoir ten years ago writing...	Mar.27.2009 Cover-ups on the couch I was recently asked to talk about my novel, Vienna Triangle at a Psychoanalytic Conference (IFPE) "Daring to Speak:Languages Spoken and Unspoken." The theme of the conference seemed particularly appropriate to my novel. I was in Rome reading Thomas Mann’s Lotte in Weimar when I got the...
Feb.27.2009 Freud Again People tend to fall into two camps when they are talking about Freud: wildly partisen and "bashers." So it was particularly refreshing to read the proofs of Louis Breger's new book Dream of Undying Fame: How Freud betrayed his mentor and invented psychoanalysis. In this probing and...	Feb.11.2009 Freud the Patriarch and the Literary Critic Freudianism is on the wane these days with a plethera of other therapies and drugs taking its place, but an area where it still makes sense is in literary criticism. I started introducing Psychoanalysis into my work in college, mainly looking for phallic symbols. By the time I was in graduate...
Feb.03.2009 If Freud were a woman Mindhacks (http://www.mindhacks.com) had some amusing excerpts today from an short parody of Freud, imagining him as a woman, Phyllis Freud. Instead of penis envy, Phyllis posits womb envy as a central concept--to my mind a very reasonable concept, and makes the penis the inferior organ,...	Feb.02.2009 Was Freud lethal to his followers? I got a letter from a friend recently suggesting that Freud wasnot only paranoid but lethal to his followers. I quote: "I have been so immersed in the Freud material for so long I don't know how the ordinary reader would take to it but, it [Vienna Triangle] seems to me, to work beautifully on...
Jan.29.2009 Psychoanalytic Fictions Laura Gonzalez has a blog on psychoanalysis and art (http://lauragonzalez.co.uk/) and this morning she reviewed Vienna Triangle. Besides calling it a masterful account of psychoanalysis and the human weaknesses of its practitioners, I was delighted and amused by the way she identified with my...	Dec.30.2008 Publication day After ten books you'd think I wouldn't be so excited but I am. My book cover with the beautiful, sensuous Klimt painting of two lovers invites you to touch it. I didn't just touch it, I smelled the paper fresh off the press, admired the type and finally read the first page. That took me back to an...
Dec.19.2008 Dangerous Attraction to a Patient A young psychiatrist confesses to her supervisor that she is attracted to her male patient and he reprimands her severely saying he'd never seen anything similar. Really? She writes an article in the PsychiatricTimes about her problem and how she tried with the help of a more understanding Dr. to...	Dec.15.2008 Goals of therapy Jung at Heart (http://www.jung-at-heart.com/jung_at_heart) suggests that Freud's definition of health as the ability to love and work is a good goal for therapy. It sounds good but I wonder how often it really works. I was in Freudian analysis for years--I've written about in in my memoir The Last...

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