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As a confirmed bedtime novel-reader, I generally shun books related to psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Because most are written by outsiders to our field, they tend to trivialize and stereotype a complex and serious subject. Not so The Treatment, a serendipitous marriage of fiction and psychoanalysis. It is the sensitive and engaging story of Jake Singer, a young New Yorker who seeks analysis because he feels adrift; his life lacks meaning, substance, and purpose. He is unable to sustain a relationship and is equally indecisive and uncommitted to his career as an English teacher in a private school. He has not mourned the loss of his mother, who died when he was a child and left him with a man who went through the motions of being his father while remaining distant, stilted, and uninvolved. The story line consists of the simultaneous unfolding of his analysis and his life.
Jake's analyst is one Dr. Ernesto Morales (pun apparently intended), a Catholic Cuban expatriate who combines a formidable intellect, a mordant sense of humor, and a considerable knowledge about classical psychoanalysis and Kleinian theory, with maverick, even outrageous technique. Jake describes him as “…a madman privateer for whom conservative Freudianism was merely a flag of convenience….” His flamboyant style is markedly in contrast with the sepia tones of Jake's father. Dr. Morales maintains not only that the unanalyzed life is not worth living, but that it is an aimless groping in the dark. Analysis, as he practices it, has several rules. Jake is to tell the analyst every detail of his interpersonal life, especially those involving sex and money. The analyst is the ultimate authority over his life, the moral and practical guide. In parody of the classic dictum, Jake is expected not to make a move without his direction and permission. In addition, there are rigid rules about appointments and money, ones that Jake breaches at the risk of a sophisticated analytic tongue-lashing. Although zealo