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Girl On The Couch: Life, Love, And Confessions Of A Normal Neurotic (2009)

by Lorna Martin(Favorite Author)

3.15 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0345503600 (ISBN13: 9780345503602)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Villard

review 1: Published in England as _Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: Life, love and talking it through_ and before that, as a year of monthly columns in _Grazia_ magazine, "Conversations with my therapist." The US title infantalizes a 35-year-old Scots journalist who assigns herself psychodynamic therapy (is 30 *really* the new 17??) By turns cringe-making, hilarious, and touching, her account of her thrice-weekly sessions with Dr. J and the resulting changes in her life illuminates as it entertains.
review 2: This book was the selection for my monthly book club. I sincerely gave this book a try but this book was a series of ramblings that left me annoyed, uninterested, and bored. Lorna Martin is a thirty something journalist from Glasgow, Scotland, who after ... moreseveral attempts at therapy is recommended by her general practioner to seek psychoanalytic treatment. Martin premises the book with reasons that she is normal and why she didn't feel she needed therapy in the first place. (But obviously she felt she needed something, because she admits she's seen several different psychiatrists to find what was "wrong" with her.) When Martin finds out that the married man she's been dating gets a second mistress, who she describes as younger and prettier, she has what resembles a nervous breakdown. She finds psychotherapy extremely difficult, in that all of her attempts to recieve noticable approval from her therapist fall flat. She tells the very boring story of how she became a not so normal neurotic who spends the bulk of her adult life being jealous of her two year old nephew, and his mother (her sister) who is able to not only get married (but twice) and produce a child that brings her parents to a closer semblence of human beings. She is the epitomy of a self important neurotic. The book is supposed to be her journey through psychoanalysis and all the wonderful things she's learned from it. I'm not convinced she learned anything at all. The psychoanalysis seemed to only fuel her self importance only to be culminated into a far too long book. Possibly the most interesting portion of the book is when she talks about middle aged women who travel to Jamaica to have sex with handsome, verile, sexy young men. (Each of her journalistic endeavors reveals that her motivation for the doing the story is so she can try something she'd be embarrassed to try on her own without the guise of "journalistic research". The last few chapters a long tedious drawn out description of Christmas with her family that left me wondering what was the purpose of including it in the book. Many of the members of the book club did enjoy this book. Many of them felt that the author was relatable and they identified with many of the situations she found herself in.All in all, you will either love or hate this book. I, obviously, hated it. less

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