Melissa Knox

Divorcing Mom is a harrowing and complex book about a 14 year old girl who began therapy with a Freudian psychotherapist was abusive and demeaning and dominated Ms. Knox well into adulthood. He was hired by Melissa Knox's mother, a highly narcissistic and damaged woman, whose negative beliefs and flawed vision of her daughter gave the therapist all of the room he wanted to control Knox until mid-adulthood. It is hard to believe how this was able to continue but Melissa Knox but her own impaired view of herself after so many years of abuse with no one to nurturer or protect her.
While this book was advertised as funny I never laughed. I was filled with fury and loathing for all of the adults that preyed upon Ms. Knox. I admired her for her ability to tell this well-written complex story with verve and clarity. I was all in reading this story.
I would like to say that therapists no long abuse or demand full control of their clients lives but it is untrue. While Freudian psychotherapy has mostly fallen out of favor with its twisted belief's about women, given the power dynamic between client and therapist, it is not uncommon for clients to be damaged by them.
Thank you for this brave story and thank you to Edelweiss for allowing me to review this book for an honest opinion.… (plus d'informations)

'In the first full-length psychoanalytic biography of Oscar Wilde, Melissa Knox explores the link between little-known childhood events and figures in his life and his psychological development to explain both Wilde's creativity and his self-destructive heroism,' says the back cover blurb by an anonymous writer.

"An original and important book with highly convincing psychoanalytic interpretations of Wilde and his work," says Peter Gay in the same place.

The full colour front cover illustration shows a watercolour by Max Beerbohm, "The Name of Dante Gabriel Rossetti is Heard for the Frist Time in the Western States of America. Time: 1882. Lecturer: Mr. Oscar Wilde." The painting shows a longhaired Wilde holding a lily in his left hand, while gesticulating with his right, in front of an audience of attentive bearded American men, while a scowling Abraham Lincoln is shown in a flag-draped framed picture in the background.

Wilde came to lecture in a lucrative speaking tour of Canada and the United States of America in the late 19th century as an apostle of Aestheticism and the so-called 'House Beautiful' movement, of which he was the prime proponent.

The paperback comes wtih a twelve page section of black and white photos, including an opening photo of the Anglo-Irish writer as a child of two in feminine-looking dress, and a facsimile of a letter Wilde wrote from Reading Gaol as he was about to be released.

Dedicated to Oscar Sternbach, and published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Philip Hamilton McMillan of the class of 1894, Yale College, Melissa Knox's book was designed by Nancy Ovedovitz, typeset by the Composing Room of Michigan, printed by Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, New York in 1994, includes Acknowledgments, Introduction, Chronology, five Chapters of text, Notes, selected bibliograhical references and Index, and was published by Yale University Press of New Haven. She is assistant professor of English at St. Peter's College, New Jersey.… (plus d'informations)