Lucy Freeman "The Beloved Prison: Journey into the Unknown Self."
Freeman's cathartic, interminable account of her psychoanalysis through 20 years, four psychiatrists and two failed marriages seems to move in circles rather than toward a resolution. With writing that verges on self-romanticization ("I grew up in a world that seemed a whirlwind, tossing me from one emotional tempest to the next"), the account lacks the novelty that made a bestseller of Fight Against Fears , her psychoanalytic tell-all published 36 years ago. Psychotherapy helped Freeman to stop repeating the scripts of childhood by coming to terms with her long-congealed rage, sexual repression and terror of her parents' anger. Therapy helped her understand why she rushed into marriage with an alcoholic who beat her. The personal story of this woman whose assignments as a New York Times "lady reporter" included covering Eleanor Roosevelt, Frank Sinatra and the Duchess of Windsor is one with which many readers might identify, but the soap-opera prose may prove an impediment.
Freeman left her job and the city of New York for a new married life in Chicago shortly after the end of her first analysis and the death of her father. As the marriage failed, she returned to analysis to discover why. Much of what she discovered related to her early family life, including her philandering father and long-suffering mother. Freeman paints a detailed but sensitive portrait of how Freudian analysis helped to free her from the subconscious effects of her background.
St. Martins Press. First Edition. Hardcover. 1989.
New book. Very slightly yellowing edges of pages.