Analyst Adrift

...Analyst Adrift Free Association By Paul Buttenwteser Little, Brown 239pp $1195 Reviewed by Brian Thomas This novel about an analyst who drifts, slowly overcomes his aimless-ness and then flourishes has virtues that stem from the hero's profession Psychiatry is a fertile setting for fiction because of its peculiar combination of intimate confession and money, the ease of presenting the inner musings of ana-lysands without any awkward lmplaus-lbihty, and the moral dangers that lurk in the inequality of the patient-therapist relationship Paul Buttenwieser, a Boston practitioner, exploits the possibilities for much of what they are worth Roger Liebman, MD, is floating through life, getting abused and humiliated at every turn The patients under his care are not making any progress, he is unable to commit long-simmering ideas about psychoanalysis to paper, and his amorous life is dull and ungrati-fying "One night stands are like paying rent," quips a friend who arranges a disastrous blind date for him "You don't build up any equity " Out of loneliness Roger answers a personal ad in the Village Voice The result is an episode of such utter embarrassment that one blushes on his behalf, a tribute to Butten-wieser's skill at setting up the surprise A family flare-up over a no-account cousin named Barry becomes a pointless, draining interlude that makes Roger's relatives doubt his judgment "Not to detract from Sigmund Freud," his aunt informs him, "but old maid schoolteachers know a thing or two he never found out I've seen Barry Dick-stems come, and I've seen them go I' ve tried everything with them special tutoring, TLC, behavior mod I've even, God forgive me, put a few of them in the corner in my day You know the only thing that works7 A good swift kick in the whosis " Despair is complete when a smooth-talking colleague ingratiates himself and then brazenly steals the very theories Roger has been discussing with him After sitting through a meeting writhing with anger at hearing his gems being delivered by his erstwhile friend, Roger finds a note from the culprit in hisbox "Hopeyoudidn'tmindmynot giving you a little hype, but I was overcome by the digmty of Grand Rounds I'm putting in a special plug for you in the version I'll be sending out for publication Don't protest You deserve it " On the very last day of his own analysis Roger has a redeeming insight about his relationship with his father The epiphany is kept from seeming too pat by the dry reaction of his therapist "You would have remembered it tomorrow or the next day " At this final session, too, Roger recalls the therapist's droll parable of a condemned man who talks an emperor into sparing his life if, within one year, he can teach a horse to speak As the man is led off to the imperial stables, a guard asks him why he set himself such an impossible task The condemned manreplies "Dunngayear.manythings may happen I may die Or the emperor may die Or the horse may talk "Roger begins to take heart Rather than spend his first vacation as a full-fledged psychiatrist with his mother, Roger decides to pass the time on the Cape where all the other analysts go in August He tells her this is necessary for his career, not knowing "which was worse the hypocrisy, or the possibility that it was true, which was a worse hypocrisy " Once he arrives, the tedium of shop-talk and overfamihar faces is relieved by a chance acquaintance with a beautiful girl and her boyfriend Their unaffected companionship gives him a glimpse of the sunny youth he never had, makes him wistful about growing old and prompts a renewed interest in his fitness He starts to jog when he returns to Manhattan, and does indeed get a referral from an older doctor as a result of his vacation—a sign of acceptance in the psychoanalytic world Swimming soon replaces running, he sheds some flab and ogles a handsome blonde who takes Tae Kwon Do at his Y Then, during a session with a "cringing, hostile ass-kisser" of a patient, who is a lawyer, a burglar bursts into his office In the flush of his newly acquired muscle tone Roger actually fights back, defeats the intruder and gets his name in the newspaper Later that week he stalks confidently into the Tae Kwon Do class and introduces himself to the blonde Their involvement not only ripens into a serious affair, but Roger finally is able to write a paper, one that provokes a noisy controversy with a feminist therapist at a professional meeting Clearly he has acquired what in the jargon is called "a higher degree of ego-or-gamzation " When a bitter dispute over the therapeutic validity of free association threatens to split the Institute where he works into warring factions, Roger is crucial in patching up matters and placating the combatants His tact and diplomacy win him new points with his colleagues In addition, patients seem to be getting their lives together, and the blonde proves to be the love of his life As Roger confides in a note to his former analyst," the horse is starting to talk ' Some of Buttenwteser's characterizations are very good As a homosexual patient, Mr Hendricks, describes a lover he is moving in with and accuses Roger of being prejudiced against gays, Roger admits the iiuth ot the charge and the third-person nai ratoi obsci ves "What he really thought was that he was prejudiced against schmucks " At a subsequent session Hendncks sighs, "Maybe what you once said about [him] is true Once a schmuck, always a schmuck " Roger protests that he never used those words Hendricks retorts, "Well, you should have," thus subtly and effectively capturing the unspoken sympathy of their friendship Similarly, after Roger breaks his leg skiing, the hostile lawyer offers to help him sue the ski resort, the only way he can show his concern And the author demonstrates a real flair in persuading us to despise the suave plagiarist The deft touches in Free Association have their unhappy counterparts, however The narrator speaks from Roger's point of view in a conversational tone, and his lacomc, subdued language is often marred by cliches The Tae Kwon Do instructor, for example, is a "ferocious little jap " (Someone also ought to remind Little, Brown and Company that James Joyce went beserk with irritation when people put an apostrophe into the title of Finnegans Wake ) The looseness of the writing may be partly deliberate Still, I see no purpose in such stale locutions as "gory details," "drove him up the wall, ' a crowd that "streams,' an "earthshakmg" paper, and onecharacter threatening to "make mincemeat out of another Roger observes of his lover that she "always chose the easy, general phrase rather than seeking the precise or the witty or the original " The author would have done well to heed his hero's words A more serious lapse is his treatment of Roger Liebman It takes a while to grow suspicious of ho w Roger is always in the right, how his failings all boil down to the lack of confidence that he will finally overcome Moreover, his lack of ambiguity keeps him from being a fully developed character Roger's dignity could have survived a harder time at the hands of his creator One thinks, for instance, of Dick Diver in F Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night But Paul Buttenwieser's kindness to his protagonist does not undermine his story Free Association provides an amusing, frequently revealing portrait of a psychiatrist in self-analysis...