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From its inception, psychoanalysis has been indebted to literature: Freud sought confirmation of his theories in classical and contemporary drama, poetry, and fiction; and creative writers have reciprocated not only by becoming analysands but also by writing about their experiences with the talking cure. The history of the relationship between psychoanalysis and literature has been fascinating and sometimes turbulent. Many creative writers have described, in fictional and nonfictional works, their experiences with therapy and its effect on their art, but curiously, we do not have, in a single volume, writers speaking about this subject in their own words. It is for this reason that Tales From the Couch is a welcome addition.
Tales From the Couch consists of an all-too-brief Introduction by the editor, Jason Shinder, a poet who teaches in the graduate program at Bennington College and the New School for Social Research, and essays by seventeen creative writers who discuss their own therapy. The contributors explore a wide range of therapies, ranging from traditional psychoanalysis, discussed by Adam Gopnik, to the experimental strategy of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing experienced by Pam Houston. Nearly all of the contributors write about verbal therapy, and although their experiences differed widely, most found the process valuable both to their life and art. As Shinder notes in the Introduction, all of the contributors agree that “for effective, genuine therapy to occur, one must risk the uncertainty, fear, shame, and lack of control, real or imaginary, that come with true and ongoing self-revelation” (xiv). Additionally, most of the