From Kirkus Reviews
Soul-bearing memoirs of a woman ``born and brought up to be in psychoanalysis,'' who discovers rather late in life that writing fiction has taught her more about herself than years of psychotherapy. Webster (Sins of the Mother, 1993; Paradise Farm, 1999) was born in New York in the 1930s into a family of wealthy nonobservant Jewsher mother an abstract painter and disciple of Ashile Gorky and her father an entertainment lawyerand grew up in a segment of New York society immersed in the culture of psychiatry. ``It became, in effect, our family faith,'' she writes, noting that her anxious, temperamental mother was in therapy with a Freudian analyst five days a week for 30 years. At 14, Webster had her own therapist. Her portrait of her eccentric mother is compelling, as is her description of her own therapy-ridden adolescence. Encouraged by her first analyst to express her sexuality, she became pregnant while at Swarthmore, but her mother, seemingly nonplused, swiftly arranged for an abortion. Shortly thereafter, Webster moved back home and acquired a new therapist, the famous Kurt Eissler (founder of the Freud Archives). His views were, in Webster's words, ``archaic, patriarchal, and above all unrealistic.'' When she entered graduate school at Berkeley, another Freudian, Anna Maenchen, took over. Although Maenchen was apparently indifferent to Webster's unhappiness in her subsequent marriage, the author, by now emotionally dependent on her therapist, repeatedly turned to her over the years for help. Eventually Webster, whose writing had until then been psychoanalyses of literary texts, divorced her husband, found a new love, and took up a new line of workwriting fiction. Now, seemingly at peace with herself and bearing no resentment toward the quixotic, sometimes suicidal, very unmotherly mother whose faith in Freudian psychiatry shaped both their lives, she concludes, ``The great thing about being human is that you can recreate yourself, not by analyzing but by active imagining. A difficult family isn't fate.'' A fresh take on the poor-little-rich-girl theme, whine-free and surprisingly frank. (16 b&w photos) -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The 1950s saw waves of Freudian disciples set up practices. In The Last Good Freudian, Brenda Webster describes what it was like to grow up in an intellectual and artistic Jewish family at that time. Her father, Wolf Schwabacher, was a prominent entertainment lawyer whose clients included the Marx Brothers, Lillian Hellman, and Erskine Caldwell. Her mother, Ethel Schwabacher, was a protegee of Arshile Gorky, his first biographer, and herself a well-known abstract impressionist painter.

In her memoir, Webster evokes the social milieu of her childhood -- her summers at the farm that were shared with free-thinking psychoanalyst Muriel Gardiner; the progressive school on the Upper East Side where students learned biology by watching live animals mate and reproduce; and the attitude of sexual liberation in which her mother presented her with a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover on her thirteenth birthday.

Growing up within a society that held Freudian analysis as the new diversion, Webster was given early access to the analyst's couch: The history of mental illness in her mother's family kept her there. As a result, Freudian thought became something that was impossible for Webster to avoid. What unfolds in her narrative is both a personal history of analysis and a critical examination of Freudian practices.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In this forthright memoir, Webster (president of PEN West and author of Yeats: A Psychoanalytic Study) looks back with painful honesty at her privileged but emotionally troubled Manhattan childhood and her life in analysis. Citing a maternal family history of mental illness, she explains, "I was born and brought up to be in psychoanalysis. As a result, much of my adult life was spent on the couch." Capably narrating her voyage of self-discovery, she offers a personal perspective on the uses and misuses of Freudian theory. Webster blames her emotionally unstable mother--abstract expressionist painter Ethel Schwabacher--for her unhappy childhood and for her own mistakes as a parent. Schwabacher, who relied on a circle of psychoanalysts steeped in Freudian orthodoxy, attempted suicide more than once (most traumatically just after her husband died; Webster, then 10 years old, found her comatose mother). Surrounded by the children of a tight group of early Freudians at the progressive Dalton School, Webster started seeing a therapist before she was out of high school. It wasn't until midlife that she broke free from her therapists' advice to submit to a higher male authority in her duties as student, wife and mother, and finally found her true voice, which resonates powerfully in this absorbing tale of discovery and pain. Photos. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Booknews

Webster (freelance writer, translator and critic) describes what it was like to grow up in an intellectual and artistic Jewish family in the 1950s, when waves of Freudian disciples set up practices. She evokes the social milieu of her childhoodsummers at the farm that were shared with free-thinking psychoanalyst Muriel Gardiner, the progressive Upper East Side school, and the attitude of sexual liberation in which her mother presented her with a copy of on her 13th birthday. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Bonnie Johnston - Booklist

Webster's memoir affords a fascinating glimpse into the heyday of American psychotherapy. Webster describes her childhood, growing up with a mother, the painter Ethel Schwabacher, who was so obsessed with Freudian psychoanalysis, that she could not make a decision without consulting her therapist. As Webster grew older and unhappier, she submitted to years of fruitless analysis before rejecting Freudian dogma and finding her own path to sanity.

Looking back she identifies the problems in her own life that were caused bu her mother's application of Freudian theory to their family, and she discusses her own analysts' inability to help her cope with the death of her father and the disintegration of her first marriage. Her book is a heart-wrenching and ultimately inspiring remembrance of an era in which Freud's theories reigned supreme-one that reveals the darker side of psychoan alysis.

San Francisco Chronicle

The Last Good Freudian offers a powerful critique of orthodox psychoanalysis without engaging in Freud bashing...Paradoxically, Webster remains a good Freudian throughout the memoir, for even though she rejects psychoanalysis as a therapy, she embraces it as an interpretive technique... The Last Good Freudian is a lively and well written book. (May 7, 2000)

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Alix Kates Shulman

A wry, gossip-filled memoir about the penetration of psychoanalysis into the everyday life of a wealthy New York family. Even to this confirmed non-believer, Webster￯﾿ﾽs reflections in a Freudian vein are exotic, enjoyable, and revealing. — author of Memoirs of an ex-Prom Queen

Robert Alter

Brenda Webster￯﾿ﾽs compelling memoir provides an illuminating insight into the subculture of psychoanalysis that dominated a significant sector of American life. Growing up in a Manhattan family that embraced psychoanalysis as a kind of secular faith, she was guided or misguided by some of the leading figures of the American movement to renounce her own ambitions and submit herself to a higher male authority. The Last Good Freudian is a moving story of self-discovery and at the same time a vivid expos￯﾿ﾽ, all the more convincing because it is conveyed as a personal experience, without special pleading or polemic insistence. — author of Pleasure of Reading in an Ideological Age

Judith S. Wallerstein

A very moving, painfully honest memoir of a poor little rich girl who finally breaks free of her madcap family and overbearing helpers to find her true voice as a woman and a writer when she is well into mid life. A tribute to growth and courage in adulthood. A very absorbing read. — author of The Good Marriage: How and Why Love

Carolyn Kizer