
The Analyst Who Laughed to Death
The Double-Story of a Traumatic Childhood
Ronald Ruskin(Author)
Karnac Books (Publisher)
Published on 4. November 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
356 pages
978-1-78220-496-1 (ISBN)
Description
The Analyst Who Laughed to Death recounts Dr Reuben Moses' last days as a therapist for suicidal, psychopathic, and depressed patients. Despite his geniality, Moses is tortured. His wife has an affair, exiling Moses to a tiny flat with his neurotic retriever, Jaffe-Jaffe.His life is spent listening to intractable patients-to relieve tension Moses jogs city-streets at odd hours. He debates a radical theory, The Bubba Complex, where one's childhood is shaped by the dominant Jewish Bubba. Moses enters a final analysis with Oskar Pinsky, who battles Moses' psyche unhinged by his help-rejecting mega-millionaire patient, Paula Blum (who is a Bubba doppelganger). Pinsky sleuths through Moses' troubled post-Holocaust past, sexual misadventures, and impossible cases. Despite Pinsky's efforts, Moses jokes away his suffering, dismissing feminists who are infuriated with his theory. Following attacks on his car, office, and vicious assaults, the police order Moses to leave town. He laughs away warnings and travels to Montreal to present his Bubba Complex to jeering audiences. As Pinsky's analysis proceeds, the reader sees Moses wrestling with past demons and an unseen enemy threatening to destroy him.Written as a tragic-comic case-history, this novel, like Freud's Wolf-Man, addresses the complexity of trauma, memory, and childhood love of a powerful woman. Set in present-day Toronto, Dr Moses represents a vanishing breed, a medical psychoanalyst exploring the meaning of patients' suffering set against the current landscape of brief psychotherapy and overuse of drugs.
Reviews / Votes
'In this pitch-perfect, deliciously wicked, and funny novel, psychiatrist Ronald Ruskin takes us into the private sanctuary of the analytic hour. The Analyst Who Laughed to Death is a delight, and the humor will break your heart.'- Bonnie Zindel, psychoanalyst and Creative Literary Editor of Psychoanalytic Perspectives'The characters conduct their relatively simple lives in the most complicated manner imaginable. Their stories are funny and sad and compelling, their histories sometimes grim and painful. In this novel, Ron Ruskin seamlessly marries humour to tragedy. It is a great achievement.'- Joseph Kertes, Dean Emeritus of the Creative Writing and Comedy Programs at Humber College, Toronto, and winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award'Go read Ronald Ruskin's engrossing novel! Mysteries unfold in psychoanalysis, as they should in life. They are made more palatable when mixed with comfort food, nostalgia, and humor. Readers will find themselves here too.'- Dr Stanley J. Coen, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and ResearchMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 230 mm
Width: 147 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-78220-496-1 (9781782204961)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Ronald Ruskin is a psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Hospital, and associate professor and training and supervising analyst at Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis. He has co-edited texts on psychotherapy supervision, as well as on humanities and medicine, such as his 2011 book 'Body and Soul'. He is a founding editor of 'Ars Medica', a medical-humanities journal, published over forty-five stories in literary and medical journals, and written a thriller entitled 'The Last Panic', and 'The Analyst Who Laughed to Death', the tragic-comic story of a tormented analyst who never escaped childhood.