Bullet to the Heart One to the Brain A Psychodrama Played on the Page

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A compelling story of family fights told with heartbreak and humor Bullet to the Heart, One to the Brain is a work of fiction and it is all true. Elaine Zimbel, a therapist with many years of experience, is not playing with us when she makes this claim. At the age of sixty-four, finding herself deeply wounded by the report of an absurd little scene involving two of her children and their small children, she is forced to wonder what happened to all the wisdom psychotherapy promised. Was she naïve to think that by the end of the 20th century human relations would have conquered ‘family-induced’ (is there any other kind?) neurosis’? She sets out to explore her life and her learning, determined not to shrink from either personal or professional honesty. It dawns on her along the way that ‘when Dr. Freud was discovering all that inadequate mothering causing all those neuroses in his patients, he was living in an era when women had very little control over their bodies and men, in an urgent squirt of denial, had even less.’ And what do we have now? ‘Liberated motherhood’ she observes, ‘is an insane asylum for the deeply committed.’ Bullet to the Heart, One to the Brain is ruthless and funny, angry and sad, poetic and wise. You won’t know whether to laugh or to cry.