The Purloined Clinic: Selected Writings of Janet Malcolm

About this book

The Purloined Clinic is a retrospective of essays reviews and reports that reflect the range and depth of Janet Malcolms engagement with psychology criticism art and literature. She examines aspects of "that absurdist collaboration " the psychoanalytic dialogue from which come "small stray sell recognitions that no other human relationship yields brought forward under conditions...that no other human relationship could survive." She addresses such subjects as Tom Wolfes vendetta against modern architecture Milan Kunderas literary experiments and Vaclav Havels prison letters. She explores the somewhat deflated world of post-revolutionary Prague guides us through the labyrinthine New York art world of the eighties and takes us behind the one-way mirror of Salvador Minuchins school of family therapy.And to each subject she brings the incisive skepticism and dazzling epigrammatic style that are her hallmarks. Why dont more people write like Malcolm?... She is cast from the mold of the Eastern European intellectual: beholden to modernism. as familiar with Kunderas exile as she is with Freuds Vienna. This sensibility must grant her the detachment she sometimes so mercilessly employs but it also gives her an unassailable passion for getting to the center of things. Boston Globe From the Trade Paperback edition.