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The title of this superb biography of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann is taken from a story told by the sixteenth-century rabbi Isaac Luria, in which he said that “the responsibility of every Jew is to rescue the divine sparks and restore order to the world. This is the work known as tikkun”1 (p. xvi). The title thus succinctly captures so much of Fromm-Reichmann's life and work, and eloquently shows the continuity that binds together her orthodox upbringing with her inspiring career of dedicating herself to intensive individual work with severely ill patients.
The book also includes a sensitive and fascinating history of Chestnut Lodge's first decades. Ironically, I received the book for review the very month that the Lodge closed its doors. Having left the medical staff of the Lodge only two years earlier, I found reading the book to be a bittersweet experience. Although Fromm-Reichmann's tenure at the Lodge occurred long before I was there, I was struck again and again by how well Hornstein captures the spirit of the Lodge (“a kind of analytic think tank” [p. 180]), and she gives an intriguing account of how it developed its unique institutional identity. Many of us are still in mourning over the loss of the Lodge and what that loss reflects about the current status of American psychiatry. We can be grateful to Hornstein for memorializing the Lodge and one of its best-known