This book was unsuspectingly well written. Great prose that reverberated with a feel for its subject.
This haunting extract from the penultimate page of the novel:

“At the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the human characters wake up and rub their eyes and aren’t sure what has happened to them. They have a feeling that a great deal has occurred – that things have somehow changed for the better, but they don’t know what caused the change. Analysis is like that for many patients.”

– central psychoanalyst Aaron Greenwood’s summation of his profession’s impact on patients.

The act of transference has been touched on throughout the book, which I wish to investigate further. Work on narcissist and borderline personalities is discussed with a general conclusion that these personalities are too difficult to analyse.
Interesting discussion on repressed memories, abreaction (in the old language of the Master, Freud) and the imperfect healing process. This book was first published in 1981. It would be interesting to see an updated look at psychoanalysis undertaken with the same sensitivity.
A short discussion on the implications of the stuttering and mutterings of patients in analysis for the hidden content and meaning, research conducted by Hartvig Dahl, approx page 84-85. This shows promise as I intuit it when writing, that there is something going on in the words I put in my character’s mouths that seem inauthentic. Perhaps this alludes to a solution.