Good fiction is like good therapy; it helps us see who we really are.
The Education of Crazy Jane
Publication date: 2024
ISBN 979-8822937635
So begins The Education of Crazy Jane. A college student named Sam discovers the risks of protesting against the Vietnam War. Confronted at gunpoint by a hostile soldier, Sam is rescued by the charming intervention of Jane-Crazy Jane to his friends.
When he and Jane become romantically involved, Sam is both ecstatic and worried. Jane's idealism fuels her relentless determination to stop the war, and Sam frets about her safety. Not surprisingly, she gets arrested after smearing red paint on the walls of the Ann Arbor draft board office.
The couple struggle with their relationship, not just because of Jane's protest activities, but because she is a young woman with a problem. She is passionately committed to ending the war, but she has trouble committing herself to anyone trying to get close enough to love her.
Writing with humor as well as compassion, the author invites the reader to bear witness as Jane faces her day in court, Sam tries to protect her, and they both try to hold onto each other during the social upheaval of the Sixties.
The Age of Worry
Publication date: 2020
ISBN 978-1-64990-146-0
Daniel Wunsch is worried about his teenage daughter, Cordelia. He worries that she is drinking too much—which she is—and he’s particularly worried because his mother had a serious problem with alcohol. In fact, his troubled mother disappeared when he was seventeen. She left a note, left the family, and vanished thirty years ago. Now, as he looks at Cordelia, who bears a striking resemblance to her missing grandmother, he feels certain that disaster is imminent. And he can’t help but feel angry at her for ignoring his concerns.
Cordelia is hurt and puzzled by her father’s angry, rejecting comments and his dire predictions about her future. She keeps a packed suitcase under her bed, ready to leave home at any moment.
In the middle of this family conflict, Dan starts receiving anonymous tips regarding the possible whereabouts of his mother. He sets out to follow the clues, getting glimpses along the way of his mother’s missing years. Meanwhile, his relationship with Cordelia only gets worse until she reaches her breaking point.
In this engaging and psychologically insightful book, the reader travels back and forth in time to follow three interwoven stories, three points of view, and three members of a family as they struggle to find each other and repair the disrupted bonds between them.
Tea with Freud: An Imaginary Conversation about
How Psychotherapy Really Works
Publication Date: March 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4575-4403-3
"With the fascinating literary device of an imaginary dialogue with Freud at its center, Steven Sandler’s Tea With Freud offers a panoply of insights regarding unconscious mental functioning, the nature of psychotherapy, and the ubiquitous anguish of the human condition. Part history, part Freudiana, part explicatory discourse, Sandler’s book is fun to read and highly instructive as well."
Salman Akhtar, MD
Professor of Psychiatry
Thomas Jefferson University
Training and Supervising Analyst
Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia
For Psychotherapists:
Remembering with Emotion in Dynamic Psychotherapy
ISBN-13: 978-0765708274
ISBN-10: 0765708272
Publication Date: 2012
"This wonderful work shows how the direct experience of emotion and emotional transformation is the key to healing in psychotherapy. Sandler offers some novel hypotheses about working with emotion. He shows us how to work with constricting and expanding emotion and defenses against these and how to change negative memories with positive attachment memories. This is a book from which you can learn how a therapist actually does therapy. It is easy to read and appropriate for beginners as well as experienced practitioners."
- Dr. Leslie S. Greenberg, York University
(Available in hardcover and electronically)