Af en toe komt een eerlijke glimp van de therapeut als persoon te voorschijn, die dan naadloos in de volgende casus een vervolg krijgen. De epiloog, als round-up van het nut van dit alles is meer nog dan de 5 individuele gevallen, een bron van inzichten en gewaagde stellingnames over het nut, de algemene toepasbaarheid of gevolgen van analyse en therapie. ( )

Uncertain whether psychotherapy brings fundamental, long-lasting change, New York City psychoanalyst Akeret recently tracked down five patients whom he had treated 20-35 years earlier. One of them, Naomi Goldberg, a self-hating Bronx college student abused and rejected by her parents in the late 1950s, had, during therapy, adopted the persona of a Spanish flamenco dancer, calling herself Isabella Cortez. Another patient, Seth Waterson, had been a newly married, impotent young filmmaker given to sadomasochistic fantasies, having been raised by a sexually abusive stepfather and a mother who strapped him in a constricting harness like a dog on a leash. We also meet nurse/midwife Mary McGinely, who believed she could murder people by wishing them dead; French novelist Sasha Alexandrovich, a narcissist with writer's block; and circus performer Charles Embree, who had a psychosexual obsession with a polar bear. Although none of these people had achieved a "perfect cure," three went on to lead productive, happy lives, whereas therapy had mixed results with the other two. Akeret's compulsively readable profiles are compelling existential dramas, and, with this deeply insightful book, he joins the front rank of psychotherapists who write about their practices.