Jennifer and Her Selves

In contrast to Joan Francis Casey's recent pseudonymous autobiography, The Flock , relating the lengthy, arduous integration of her multiple personalities, Schoenewolf's record of his five-month treatment of Jennifer and her six additional selves is jarringly inauthentic. The author ( The Art of Hating ) was a novice psychotherapist in Manhattan more than a decade ago when a suicidal young dancer began to reveal her alternate selves in therapy. After describing these sessions, he offers entries from his journal, noting his growing attraction to her. In a ``simulated'' journal, ``as if written by Jennifer and her alter personalities,'' he details the rapid, peril-free integration of her selves. Finally, believing himself in love with his patient (and in this countertransference aligning himself with Jung, Sandor Ferenczi and Josef Breuer), he painfully terminates his treatment of her. Schoenewolf's convincing account of his emotional reactions to Jennifer is grossly compromised by the first-person fiction of her diary in this highly ``dramatized'' version of an actual case. Psychotherapy Book Club selection. (Sept.)