Tales from a Traveling Couch: Psychotherapist Revisits His Most Memorable Patients

After thirty-five years in practice, prominent New York psychotherapist and author Robert Akeret found himself in the thrall of a single question: Did therapy make a real difference in his patients lives? So, on a sunny morning in April, Dr. Akeret got in his van and set off to visit his most memorable former patients--a journey "in search of story endings." And what remarkable stories they are... Naomi, an abused young Jewish girl from the Bronx who transforms herself into a Spanish flamenco dancer named Isabella--what is she like now, in her mid-fifties? What about Charles, who fell madly in love with a circus polar bear? Had he been able to resist his fatal psychosexual attraction? What of Sasha, the dashing, prize-winning French novelist with writers block and a penchant for exploiting women? In the end, did his art prevail or his life? And what became of Mary--did she ever "murder" again? Like a brilliant psychological detective novel, this book tells its stories in fascinating detail while raising fundamental questions about psychotherapy.