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Henry James's ability to tell a tale is unsurpassed. Despite his obsessively tedious over-precise style of writing, his zest for life is contagious. When I read The Ambassadors in college, I was set afire with a lasting wish and determination to “live.” He promised me that there was a way out of the dismal world I inhabited, that there would be a Paris in my future. That promise carried me a long way through many years of schooling, including my training to become a psychoanalyst. And, strangely enough, it was actually in Paris — sitting on a bench in the Tuileries Gardens — that I came fully to life. After hours of viewing the Impressionist paintings, and resting surrounded by Monet's water lilies, my creative spirit burst forth. Soon I had written my first short story and, within two years, I had taken my first significant photograph.
There are those who do not enjoy Henry James's stories and would agree with his brother William that there is a “want of blood” in them, that they are inclined to be “trifling.” However, Henry's observations of how people feel and how they manage themselves and others so as to maintain an inner balance and yet find meaning in life are both subtle and sensitive. Only recently I ran across an extraordinary observation of a woman's behavior in his second novel, written in his early thirties, which had taken me years of working with patients to grasp. But it is his repeated admonition to make the most of life before it is too late that brings me back again and again to Henry James.
It is for this reason that I occasionally recommend his novella The Beast in the Jungle to patients when they are frightened and reluctant to move forward in their lives. Along with the many supportive, encouraging, loving voices of our early parents which we have internalized and assimilated into our being -into who we are — we also have critical voices from the past: the “beasts” that hide in the jungle of our minds waiting to pounce on us: to humiliate us if