The Writing Cure by Emma Lieber

What does an infestation symbolize? Both the beginning and end of Emma Lieber's The Writing Cure contain an infestation. The first chapter describes a “bed bug” infestation that occurred early in Lieber's marriage when she first became an analysand. The second infestation is a moth infestation that she and her husband battle together later in their marriage when The Writing Cure is already in the process of being written. What can we make of this bookend of infestations in a psychoanalytic work?

The Writing Cure is Lieber's autobiographical journey through her personal experiences in analysis. It is a “meta-experience” in which she describes her own writing process while writing The Writing Cure itself. She uses her literary background to demonstrate the ways in which writing and literature complement and frequently mirror the psychoanalytic process. Mixed in with her wide range of academic knowledge on these matters, the text contains stories of Lieber's family, marriage, and children. It is personal and intimate.

Lieber writes that an infestation is the opposite of the “blankness” she fears and that perhaps all creative types fear when they are not creating. She called her bedbug infestation, “the sickness you didn't see coming but that had been with you since the day you were born” (p. 11) and “psychosomatic.” As Lieber speculates in this text that she entered analysis because she needed help to have her children, it could be interpreted that this first infestation represented an external resistance to having children. Although not explicitly stated in Lieber's words, it seemed there was a desire to be a mother and a fear of becoming one.

The introduction and first chapter of The Writing Cure mirror a first analytic session. There is a problem, there is “something wrong,” and, as Lieber comes to reveal later, there is a “secret.” The first chapter is titled, “On Coming to Write,

or Tell Me About Your Mother,” and is the longest portion of the book. She explains h