About fourteen years ago I heard the rumor that soon after the publication of Janet Malcolm's book, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, the application rate by prospective patients to the New York Psychoanalytic Institute's clinic soared, as did the application rate of prospective candidates for training. If one interprets her book as accurate in its rather pessimistic account of psychoanalysis at the time—the early 1980's—the rumor's implications become very interesting.

It seems that lay books on analysis are read and do have an effect. But who reads them? My guess: people interested in becoming analysts, their spouses, and patients interested in analytic treatment. Perhaps most of us can remember the book that we first read about psychoanalysis: initial encounters have a kind of permanence, especially