Elizabeth Lunbeck: 2 books

American social critics in the 1970s seized on narcissism as the sickness of the age. But they missed the psychoanalytic breakthrough that championed it as the wellspring of ambition, creativity, and empathy. Elizabeth Lunbeck's history opens a new view on the central questions faced by the self struggling amid the crosscurrents of modernity.

This fascinating book, which presents an early psychoanalyst’s session-by-session notes on a case of hysteria caused by severe sexual trauma and incest, offers a vivid portrait of psychoanalytic practice in the second decade of the twentieth century. Accompanying these notes are insightful commentaries...