What do the Trappist perfection of Seville orange marmalade, Clinton's admittance to the Eucharist communion, and the use of an epoxy resin in the repair of the Sphinx have in common? They all have to do with the struggles of psychoanalysts to hold onto their dignity and identity in the modern marketplace.

Surrounded and squeezed by the pharmaceutical giants, managed care driven short term therapies, and the self-help industries, psychoanalysts have been forced out of their quiet offices and institutes into the cold worlds of commerce and community. Often the results have not been pretty. But the analysts are not alone. What profession is not on the run? Medicine, journalism, accounting, academia, publishingÑall have struggled to hold onto some recognizable sense of themselves while seeking to adapt and survive.

The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute provides the backdrop for this satirical book about serious subjectsÑspecifically about psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts but generally about psychoanalytic values and their relevance to the struggle of professions.

Dr. Phillip Freeman is a psychiatrist and a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. He has faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School and at the Boston University Medical School where he was director of Medical Student Education and a vice chair in the Department of Psychiatry. His publications include writing about psychoanalytic education, psychopathology, and applied psychoanalysis. He discusses and consults to production of films and plays in the Boston area. His private practice is in Newton, Massachusetts.

(617) 266-0953
library@bostonpsychoanalytic.org