Untangling: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis

A memoir of psychoanalysis necessitates layers of memories. Novelist and academic Peters (emeritus, literature and writing, California State Univ. at Channel Islands; When Mothers Work: Loving Our Children Without Sacrificing Our Selves) untangles her childhood and young adulthood through the process of psychoanalysis twice in her life. After growing up in midcentury New York with a mother who was married and widowed young, Peters faced many challenges and eventually sought analysis to address lifelong mental health issues. She contrasts the two very different analysts with whom she works and the two processes through her different phases of life—as a young woman, she needed help working through major life transitions, while as an older woman she found that she was still unable to move beyond childhood’s scars despite a successful life. Peters is unsparingly honesty about herself, her parents, and her analysts. The result is a compelling memoir as well as an unusually in-depth therapeutic narrative that promises the possibility of redemption from early trauma at any age. Focusing on the psychoanalytic specialty of psychotherapy, this work clarifies concepts such as transference that are particularly important to this style of therapy.