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Anna Freud once advised a young and aspiring psychoanalyst (he was 14 years old) that the best preparation to become a psychoanalyst is to read literature (Benveniste, 2015). Ferro (2014) notes too that the truest insights of psychoanalysis already appear in the work of artists. As a science of hermeneutics, psychoanalysis points to the wisdom in literature and the arts in general, arguably of greater utility than knowledge from medicine or psychological empiricism. One need only note the frequency with which Freud quoted Shakespeare to see the truth in this perspective.
In this creative and astute book, Stephanie Brody has constructed a work of art in itself. She offers readers the wisdom of classic and modern literature (opera included!), among which we find Homer, Neruda, Bellini, Bizet, Pullman and Lucretius. She extracts their words and applies them to the existential challenges of loss, illness, limit and mortality, all evidenced in everyday analytic work. If that were not enough, she does so with adept linguistic facility, metaphoric skill and poeticism, making the reading a delight despite persistent themes of death and other existential agonies.
Beginning with the Prologue, she warns: «There will be no holding back in these pages. Death cannot be avoided, even if you close this book… Death is not at the end, death is here in every never… Death has been my muse… an unwelcome companion… no longer concealed, perhaps less feared» (5, italics added). At once personal and universal, Brody meanders through the internal worlds of her patients while often referring back to loved mentors, respected guides, some of whom are now lost. In this way, the book is infused with clinical relevance and personal revelations making the profound pearls immediately accessible and clinically useful. If Brody has a knack for the classics and language, the reader might also take pleasure in knowing she herself is a choir singer. I enjoyed imagining her voice as I read her words, in my