Kim Chernin, well known for her autobiographical writings on the vicissitudes of eating and starving and her memoirs of growing up in a Communist household, now turns to a different kind of memoir: her experience with psychoanalytic treatment.

Chernin does not seem to share the old Freud's concerns about the efficacy and indefinite duration of psychoanalytic treatment, except at moments of disagreements with her analyst, late in the process. Her quest for psychic healing, or perhaps spiritual salvation through psychoanalysis, persists over 25 years, and beyond that, in modified forms. The focus of the book is an exhaustive exploration of her three analytic experiences. Against the shadowy