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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

Fictional psychologists and psychotherapists: 11. Zugzwang by Ronan Bennett

5/1/2015

6 Comments

 
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St Petersburg, March 1914: Avrom Rozental has travelled to the city to take part in the World Chess Championship. Due to the fragility of his mental state, his minders have referred him to Dr Otto Spethmann, a renowned psychoanalyst. A widower with an adolescent daughter, Dr Spethmann is becoming overly involved with a new patient, Anna Petrovna, a society beauty and daughter of the powerful Zinnurov, nicknamed The Mountain. The psychoanalyst is also a chess player, engaged in a remote game with his friend and celebrated musician, Reuven Kopelzon, who he has never yet defeated. He considers himself one step removed from politics, until his office is raided and he and his daughter imprisoned on suspicion of concealing information in relation to a dual murder.

Zugzwang is a term used in chess to refer to the state in which a player is reduced to utter helplessness, obliged to move, yet every move is guaranteed to make his position worse. Replete with parallels between the logic of the game, the practice of psychoanalysis and the sociopolitical shenanigans of a country on the brink of revolution, there are many zugzwangs in the novel, leading to a climax in which Dr Spethmann is faced with an impossible choice between different kinds of love.

Like the cultured city with its sordid underbelly, many of Dr Spethmann’s patients appear healthy on the surface with disturbance lurking underneath. He sees his job as accessing the truth in the form of repressed memories, but his patients frequently change their stories and feed him outright lies. In the external world, friends become enemies, aggressors become allies, tsarists masquerade as Bolsheviks and vice versa. Agents are sacrificed like pawns on the chessboard, trust is at a premium and tactics are calculated and recalculated in the fight for survival.

The relationship of personal to political is raised as the two friends Spethmann and Kopelzon contrast their comfortable lives with those of their fellow Jews (p136):

‘Is it not right to speak of duty when we see these things? When we see our brothers forced to live as beasts? What should we do then? This is the question, Otto. This is the question for men like you and me, comfortable, well fed and successful. What do we do for our brothers?’ He drained his champagne in a single gulp. ‘Madmen and fanatics are killing us every day,’ he said, ‘murdering us.’

Parallels are drawn between the analytic process and the detective work involved in an investigation of murder. With the search for the truth taking priority over the witness’ comfort, the analyst questions Anna about an incident in her childhood immediately after a session of lovemaking, while the police inspector has no qualms about subjecting Dr Spethmann and his daughter to a spell in prison. The limits of both a citizen’s rights to privacy (cf Peter Carey’s Amnesia) and the therapist’s commitment to confidentiality are tested, for example when Dr Spethmann’s case notes are inspected by the police and when he chooses to disclose aspects of the therapeutic narrative to safeguard those he loves.

It is also a novel about the nature of change, whether it be by the unhurried process of psychoanalysis or by revolution. Dr Spethmann just happens to be seeing the de facto chief (in Lenin’s exile) of the Bolshevik faction of the Social Democrats, who expresses his impatience with his therapist’s approach (p57):

‘How would it be if I went to the people I represent and they told me all about their problems – how they couldn’t survive on their wages, how they lived twenty to a room and had no clean water, how rats swarmed over their children at night? How would it be if they told me all this and all I could say was: “What colour are the rats?”’

Although therapeutic practice has undoubtedly changed in the last hundred years, it’s not difficult to imagine some present-day analysands identifying with this sentiment. Yet one of the things that interested me about this novel was the presentation of psychoanalytic practice in its very early days. I’m not sufficiently knowledgeable about the history to assess the accuracy of the characterisation but, given that the story was set a mere twenty years after Freud and Breuer published their seminal Studies on Hysteria, I wasn’t particularly surprised at Dr Spethmann’s fluid therapeutic boundaries. After his initial session with Anna, they sit in his consulting room chatting over tea, although he does concede that he’s crossed a line when they become lovers. I think it’s typical of practice at the time that Dr Spethmann would meet his current and prospective patients at social gatherings, and offer treatment to his friend. I can only speculate as to why that was considered acceptable: with Freud’s insistence on the scientific objectivity of his new technique practitioners might have considered it akin to any other medical intervention; the presumably restricted pool of interest among the largely affluent Jewish intelligentsia made for a significant overlap between the analyst’s social circle and his/her work.

Another difference was in the analyst’s belief that the recovery of repressed memories would constitute a cure whereas, as I’ve remarked in relation to another fictional therapist, modern therapists would consider this neither necessary nor sufficient. Might the same be said about the quest for a sociopolitical cure: does an uprising of the oppressed automatically end their suffering; can we construct more egalitarian structures without exposing the injustices of the past?
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Thanks to Val for recommending this novel for our literary lunch, as well as to Jill and Ros for a discussion that significantly enhanced my appreciation of its nuances.

Follow the links for my thoughts on how to write a convincing contemporary psychotherapist and for my reviews of other novels in this series. Next in this series, we meet a therapist in training in Kate Evans’s The Art of the Imperfect. Next in my general reviews will be Vigilante by Shelley Harris.


Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
6 Comments
Charli Mills
5/1/2015 05:00:08 pm

Fascinating review! Being a person who likes to look to the past to understand the future, I like this backward glancing novel that brings futuristic questions to light such as your posed, "can we construct more egalitarian structures without exposing the injustices of the past?" I think the answer depends upon whether or not such exposure leads to growth. Intriguing to, the comparisons between detective work and the period psychoanalysis. Great photo, too!

Reply
Annecdotist
6/1/2015 05:45:05 am

Thanks, Charli, I also enjoyed that aspect of the novel. Even though it's 100 years ago and the politics are slightly different today, I think the question of how we create and maintain humane societies still resonate across the years.
I thought the photo was a little dark and I wanted to include it because I liked the idea of us sitting in a row with identical novels.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
6/1/2015 03:01:00 am

This sounds like a very complex read, Anne, and I envy you your literary lunch and the opportunity of discussing it with others. I think sharing ideas about a book read can increase understanding and enjoyment; in the way that discussing Stephen Grosz with you (and others) did for me last year. I think I would enjoy this book, though I am not a fan of politics in any of its forms.
What struck me most about this post was the question in the first quote, "What do we do for our brothers?" I think this question is just as relevant today, here and everywhere. It is very easy to sit complacent and comfortable in our homes when misery haunts many around. I think many ask the same of themselves but few know what to do, or how to do it, or indeed have the courage to act. Myself included.
Also of interest was the term Zugzwang. It will be a great one to remember and use in word games. It also very aptly fits a situation I often find myself in in those word games I play!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts in this post. The book sounds intriguing. :)

Reply
Annecdotist
6/1/2015 05:51:44 am

This novel probably contains more twists and turns than my brain can cope with on its own, so it was great to have the input from other readers to my thinking.
I agree, "what do we do for our brothers?" is such an important question and, given that the answer for most of us is going to be "not enough", perhaps one we easily shy away from. I think it is hard to keep in mind the extent of inequalities across the world while not beating ourselves up to much about our own failures. Sadly, some of our Western governments don't particularly help but rather pander to xenophobia and greed.
I hadn't thought about the term zugzwang for word games but sadly it wouldn't work in Scrabble, where there's only one Z!

Reply
geoff link
6/1/2015 11:46:55 am

another great new word - zugzwang to add to Norah's learnerate. My dictionary runneth over. I agree so much with the sentiment expressed by you and Norah and you about our wretchedly selfish and myopic governments. Linda has been doing a project on textiles as forms of protest and one involves Shannon Watch - a group of Irish women who keep a vigil at Shannon airport since it was used by the US, under the blind eye of the Irish government for extraordinary rendition of Guantanamo inmates. Despite assurances they suspected duplicity which of course is difficult to prove but almost certainly involved. They are trying to do the little things for their brothers, following the leads set but similar (women's) groups in Chile (under Pinochet) and Argentina (Under the generals at the time of the disappeared) and Mexico (as part of the government inspired drug clean up that was all slash and burn and had little to do with the rule of law). Now how did we get here? Oh yes, another fab post!

Annecdotist
8/1/2015 02:23:29 am

Thanks, Geoff, it's really interesting what is happening these days regarding what have been traditionally women's crafts. On the one hand, there are the daughters of feminists wanting to stay at home making cupcakes and on the other handicrafts like knitting and quilting meeting a radical agenda (perhaps they always did, and I was unaware). The project you mentioned sounds really interesting, as was the one in the prison that preceded it.
And I love how the discussion can take us to such unexpected places – I wonder if there's any radical quilting going on in St Petersburg?


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