In her latest book, \”The Thief of Happiness: The Story of an Extraordinary Psychotherapy,\” Bonnie Friedman sorts through the complex, confusing, ambivalent relationship between therapist and patient by way of her own psychotherapy, revealing the seductive \”thief\” to be Friedman\’s trusted doctor, a fact that the reader realizes immediately, but that takes the author years to understand.
Oscar night is almost upon us, and there is considerable talk (and pride) about three of the chief contenders — Halle Berry, Will Smith and Denzel Washington — all of whom are black. But don\’t be fooled: Hollywood and the film industry is still primarily a Jewish story, no matter who deserves and carts off the evening\’s prizes.
\n\”My Stroke of Luck\” by Kirk Douglas (William Morrow, $22.95)\n\nFive years ago, Kirk Douglas, the legendary tough guy of 84 movies, decided to end his life.
The High Holy Days are a time for contemplation, a time to give thanks, to repent for the wrongs of the past year and seek forgiveness from those you may have hurt and especially from God.
Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman\’s art-filled home on a quiet, verdant Brentwood street is a world away from the gritty industrial world in which he lived as a child during the Depression and again as a young man on the cusp of World War II. But it\’s his experiences in that world of assembly-line workers that led him to the rabbinate and to his 52 years in Los Angeles.
At first glance, the author Susanna Kaysen and the actress Winona Ryder have little in common. Kaysen, who is in her 50s and the author of several well-received volumes, grew up upper-middle-class and Jewish in Cambridge, MA and is the daughter of an economics professor. And Ryder, the movie star, spent many of her formative years in a Northern California commune, the daughter of a Jewish hippie intellectual who often chatted around the kitchen table with poet Allen Ginsberg and LSD guru Timothy Leary.
I\’m not mental. Really. I\’m not manic-depressive,hypomanic, borderline schizophrenic or psychotic. I don\’t hear voicesor imagine I\’m being followed by Marie Osmond. I don\’t have tics or acompulsive need to wash my hands or avoid cracks in thesidewalk.
Like a lot of people, I could just use someone totalk to. That\’s all. I figure it can\’t hurt.
After all, my family is like a Who\’s Who of mentalillness.
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