Jennifer and Her Selves

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In contrast to Joan Francis Casey's recent pseudonymous autobiography, The Flock , relating the lengthy, arduous integration of her multiple personalities, Schoenewolf's record of his five-month treatment of Jennifer and her six additional selves is jarringly inauthentic. The author ( The Art of Hating ) was a novice psychotherapist in Manhattan more than a decade ago when a suicidal young dancer began to reveal her alternate selves in therapy. After describing these sessions, he offers entries from his journal, noting his growing attraction to her. In a ``simulated'' journal, ``as if written by Jennifer and her alter personalities,'' he details the rapid, peril-free integration of her selves. Finally, believing himself in love with his patient (and in this countertransference aligning himself with Jung, Sandor Ferenczi and Josef Breuer), he painfully terminates his treatment of her. Schoenewolf's convincing account of his emotional reactions to Jennifer is grossly compromised by the first-person fiction of her diary in this highly ``dramatized'' version of an actual case. Psychotherapy Book Club selection. (Sept.)

Library Journal

By psychotherapist Schoenewolf's ( The Art of Hating , Jason Aronson, 1990) own admission, this is a ``dramatized version'' of his involvement with Jennifer, a suicidal young dancer suffering from multiple personality disorder. After treating her for five months, Schoenewolf notes that Jennifer is beginning to integrate her several selves. However, attracted to her from the start and now emotionally spent, he insists that she accept a referral to another therapist. Schoenewolf nearly convinces the reader that he is out of control. While his account is interesting, a more satisfying, better-written expression of the therapist's experience of the therapeutic relationship is Irvin D. Yalom's Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy ( LJ 8/89). For large collections.-- Marlene Charnizon, formerly with ``Library Journal''