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Crazy Love is a short, pithy, and very wise book - reissued and reedited since its original 2015 publication - that surely ought to be required reading for any apprehensive soul contemplating psychoanalytical psychotherapy. Here then is what to expect if your seemingly aloof analyst adheres, for the most part, to classical technique. The first rate therapist “is merely a quietly attentive and tentative trained facilitator,” Morris writes, “a guide towards the opportunity for the patient to think for himself and about himself.” (Freud, as Paul Roazen had fun revealing, did not always observe the rigid rules of his acolytes, such as humoring a Chow or two parked cozily on his consulting room rug during sessions.) Of course, there is nothing “merely” about it, as Morris amply explains to the uninitiated.
The lure for the lovesick or lovelorn fledgling client is a flotilla of eye-opening lessons on how to negotiate the tormented erotic battlefield within oneself as well with others, and indeed very sound guidance is amply provided, not least on how to deal with obscure objects of desire that a certain branch of psychoanalysis insists that we all inveterately chase. “Maturity means being able to distinguish between one's inner wishes and one's impulse to force others to fulfill them,” she stresses, “… and learning to acknowledge that in a healthy society one cannot have everything one wants,” which, glancing at 10 Downing Street (not to mention, The City), might not apply to heedless elites in charge of the rest of us, but that's grist for another kind of story.
Morris casts a cool analytical eye on the often clumsy and self-mystifying dance of would-be romance. The search for love, the lack of love and too damn many encounters with masquerades as love (usually manufactured by oneself) propels most willing recruits into analysis. Morris is splendidly clear-sighted in her view of the plights of women today for whom “women's intellectual liberation is ahead of their emotiona