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Combining the personal story of psychoanalyst Ruth Easser, a description of the psychoanalytic milieu of her time, and an examination of life as a psychoanalyst today, Mary Kay O'Neil succeeds in weaving a complex and intriguing tale in The Unsung Psychoanalyst: The Quiet
Influence of Ruth Easser. Taking as its point of departure Easser's entry into the field of psychoanalysis in 1946, the book surveys the latter half of the first century of psychoanalysis. In a foreword, Arnold Cooper sketches an historical and political overview of that period. For psychoanalysis, it was at once a time of prestige and rigidity. Cooper outlines the emergence of dissenting voices, of pioneering institutions, of attempts to expand the confining bounds of what was considered acceptable theory and technique within the field, and he reviews the forces from without that have stimulated change. At its heart, the book is about Easser, a relatively unknown but gifted clinician and teacher who died in 1975 at the age of fifty-three. Along with the usual source material, O'Neil makes use of her personal knowledge of her subject, having been in a training analysis with Easser the last two years of her life. In addition, O'Neil allows the people connected professionally with Easser to tell their own stories of becoming and being analysts. Including the recollections of the many psychoanalysts who were interviewed by O'Neil adds a rich texture to the tapestry that emerges of psychoanalysis then and now.
But O'Neil's main purpose in writing this book is to tell the story of all psychoanalysts through a recounting of Ruth Easser's life. Thus, she uses each aspect of Easser's professional life to explore a larger picture of life as a modern psychoanalyst. The book moves from past to present and back, tracing evolution and continuity, alternating between a narrative of Easser's life, which includes commentaries by her contemporaries, and a discussion of the issues of current practice? from the prac