You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Here are two stories of the female body/mind in early life: one a work of fiction, one a memoir. Both authors explore with rigor how the events of childhood tug on the emotional topography of the adult self. In Our Time Is Up (a novel), Roberta Satow, a sociologist and psychoanalyst, describes how analytic treatment can unearth early experiences, breathe life into them once more through the transference, hear them out, and then gently challenge and add to their truth. In Memories of a Chaotic World: Growing Up as the Daughter of Annie Reich and Wilhelm Reich, a writer of a different generation and background, Lore Reich Rubin, MD (1928-2024), documents the hardship and dislocation of her childhood as well as her formidable resilience. Reich Rubin poignantly conveys her memories, folding them into a narrative that weaves together the observations of others. She interrogates her feelings and challenges her thoughts.
Both women, fictional and real, thrive.
We first meet the narrator Rose in Our Time Is Up on the porch of her parental home in 1940s Brooklyn. She is three, an only child, and banished from the house. The neighborhood stray dogs appear at the foot of the porch steps, and Rose, afraid of dogs, begs her mother to open the door. Her mother does not, and Rose crouches behind a chair and chants a drinking song to carry herself through the fear. She then hears a bath running and realizes the mother forgot her. Eventually, she lets herself in and regains the safety of her bedroom. This is Prologue.
The book begins on January 26, 1967, on the porch of a psychoanalysis at Manhattan’s Washington Square Institute as Rose seeks help. Satow describes Rose’s mind as creative and anxious, restlessly developing back stories for each patient in the waiting room. Then Rose meets her analyst, Joan, and tries to make her laugh. Joan resists the induction. Instead, she presses for why Rose wants treatment now. Psychoanalysts, analysts-to-be, and analytic patients will recognize a