A Dialogue on Love

Rating:
Summary: Some things are better left in one's own closets
Review: Let me begin by expressing sorrow for Sedgwick's illness and admiration for her contributions to queer theory (which are real). Having said that, I nonetheless thought this book somewhat of an embarrassment and surely it only has been published because of Sedgwick's currency as a hot scholar. Her insights are no more remarkable than those gained by just about everyone I know who goes into therapy and she exhibits a predictable grandiosity and delusion when she muses on the fact that she must be brighter than her therapist and that she must be his most interesting patient: who among has not had that--it's called transference! Similarly, I am less put off by her sexual fantasies than bored by them. Hers seems to me to have been a very ordinary and predictable therapy--nothing wrong with that, obviously--it just doesn't warrant this kind of narcissistic public attention. And it does make me wonder what real insights Sedgwick does have about lived human existence, outside her well-maintained ivory tower. She speaks of those she "loves"--but her account is so self-centered that it seems hard to think of her actually experiencing "love" as most of us mere mortals (who have not deconstructed it) have. Perhaps most revealing is her obssession with masturbation--that and thinking about sex/sexuality seem to have been substitutes for much real human sexual interaction. Is this a new genre--the sessions and fantasies of great academics? At least Diane Middlebrook's analytically-based biography of Anne Sexton had some real sense of that patient's passions--for life, love, and, inevitably, death.

Rating:
Summary: Moving portrait of psychoanalysis
Review: Sedgwick, the doyenne of the queer studies movement in literary studies, avoids the sentimentality and sensational voyeurism that mar many recountings of psychotherapy. Her intimate narrative-written during therapy after cancer treatment-provides a moving and honest account of what it means to discuss with a stranger one's deepest anxieties about illness, mortality, dependence, and vulnerability. Sedgwick's aim is to capture the transformative possibilities of seemingly banal interactions with a paid companion.

The book uses the literary forms of Platonic dialogue and haibun, a 17th-Century Japanese prose-and-haiku travel narrative. The interlocutors are Sedgwick and her therapist; the dialogue consists of Sedgwick's retelling of therapeutic interactions, excerpts from her therapist's notes, and numerous mediating haiku glosses. Although some poems fall flat, Sedgwick's use of haibun produces an intricate map of the frustrations, ambivalences, and paradoxes that marked her therapeutic journey. These nuances make compelling her portrait of the life-changing potential of good therapy.

Although they dominate the narrative, the specific issues of Sedgwick's therapy-her attraction to death, masochistic fantasies of coerced consent, and uncertain sexual identity-stand only as particular examples for her universalist vision of the good in therapy. Sedgwick avoids the shallowness of both abstract clinical case studies and of uncritical gushes from the contemporary 'culture of therapy'. What results is appealing indeed: a deeply personal account of psychoanalysis that conveys genuine emotional depth.

Rating:
Summary: Inspiring and thought-provoking memoir
Review: This may be one of those rare occasions where the publisher's blurbs are actually accurate, reflecting (as do the author's comments above) the simple but profound pleasures to be found here. Sedgwick is famous (or infamous, depending on your politics) for her ground-breaking work in literary and cultural theory, especially her role in forging the vital and influential field of Queer Studies. The merits of this book, however, should transcend the expectations of anyone who comes to it looking for "more of the same". Sedgwick makes no claims about her "specialness" or the inherent titillation of her personal fantasy life in the book. What she does is share with her reader the insights into life, death, and the day-to-day struggles and pleasures of a person who is at the same time very special and quite ordinary, realized through a marvelously rich collaborative dialogue with a therapist who comes to learn as much about himself as about his patient in this process. For anyone who thinks or feels deeply, this should be a moving and valuable reading experience--one which we can be grateful did not stay in the author's closet.