Marie Cardinal is a well-known contemporary French novelist, author of ten novels, a prominent feminist and a familiar and sought-after media figure. Her first novel, Ecoutez La Mer won the “Prix International”. Her sixth, The Words To Say It, won “Le Prix Littlé” , an award given annually for the best medical arts book published in France. It has been translated into 18 languages, appearing in English in 1983.

It is the story of a seven-year long psychoanalysis which turns out to be entirely successful. Analysis is the last recourse for this housewife and mother of three children who just had a psychotic break and has been suffering for years from a variety of ailments. She is mostly terrified by continuous menstrual bleeding which no medical intervention can stop, and by powerful anxiety attacks—she calls them “the Thing”—that leave her wailing and cowering in a corner in her bathroom. On her first visit she explains to the