The Good Psychologist
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- 3,99 €
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- 3,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
The good psychologist teaches the principles of control and objectivity, strategies by which we evade pain, memory and lies. Meanwhile in the Center for Anxiety Disorders he dispenses wisdom, and coaxes truth from one patient in particular: a vulnerable, frightened nightclub dancer whose life is haunted by secrets.
But as he treats and guides and teaches, the good psychologist becomes increasingly disturbed by his own private torments: unrequited love, an unacknowledged child, growing loneliness and despair. Soon he is adrift as, softly, he leads the reader into the dangerous yet seductive territory of the human heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The unnamed psychologist at the center of Shpancer's intelligent and suspenseful debut is at a crossroads at the college where he teaches a night class, his brightest student is also the most troubled; his newest patient is an exotic dancer who may or may not be suffering panic attacks on stage; and his former lover, for whom he still pines, is about to move away with their love child. The chapters are divided among classroom lectures, psychotherapy sessions, and personal reflections, and though all these are often narrative killers, Shpancer, a psychologist and professor, makes them work, thanks largely to cutting dialogue and sharply defined characters. The psychobabble doesn't suck the air out of the book, but creates a lens through which to view the other events in the novel. The overall sense of intense interiority is at odds with the too clinical distance the narrator maintains from the reader, but the insights into matters of interrogation and perception are sublime, as is the fluid interplay between the narrator's personal and professional lives.
