THE BELOVED PRISON by Lucy Freeman...

THE BELOVED PRISON by Lucy Freeman (St. Martin’s: $18.95; 370 pp.) While psychoanalysis, Freud’s school of psychotherapy, certainly had its fair share of detractors when Lucy Freeman first celebrated it in “Fight Against Fears,” her 1951 book apparently struck a chord, selling over a million copies. One suspects that “The Beloved Prison,” billed as a sequel to that work, arrives in a far less receptive climate, however, for the “cognitive” school of therapy, which has become most popular in the 1980s, couldn’t be more different from psychoanalysis. Whereas the latter dreamily probes our unconscious to ponder philosophical questions of identity, “cognitive psychology” focuses on how our consciousness “misperceives” momentary events in the here-and-now. It is an approach perfectly tailored to address the pragmatic concerns of younger generations busy with the task of building careers and family against ever-higher economic odds.

As obsolete as psychoanalysis might seem, however, we are inclined to welcome “The Beloved Prison” for its reminder that the unconscious remains a realm rich with meaning. Unfortunately, though, Freeman unintentionally diminishes the appeal of psychoanalysis in these pages, celebrating therapy that only seems to encourage a kind of narcissism and evasiveness that blinds her to important social dynamics. She contends, for instance, that her second marriage failed after a dark cloud suddenly appeared on the domestic horizon, but harbingers of trouble actually seem numerous (her husband, for example, clearly feels rejected) and all are ignored in the course of her therapy, which focuses on recalling Freeman’s memories of early childhood rather than encouraging husband and wife to connect. Similarly, Freeman’s third marriage ends when she concludes that she is dominated by her husband, but rather than telling him this when he asks, “Why are you leaving me?,” she responds cryptically: “If I stayed, I would kill either you or myself.” This theatrical drama in Freeman’s mind reaches an almost comic extreme when she returns home one day to find that her third husband has cropped her plants, a sure sign, as she sees it, of his domination: “He cut them, I thought in despair, he mutilated the plants I nurtured and cherished. If he cared for me, he could not have murdered my ivy. Love me, love my plant. Kill my plant, kill me.”

Freeman’s revelation near book’s end--that she has been locking herself in a “beloved prison” by searching for a man who is like her abusive father--misses the point, for her real captor is a type of psychoanalysis that views her past as an ever-crippling obstacle, encouraging her to take an all-too-passive attitude toward confronting the present. Thus it is with a deep sense of irony that we read her conclusion: “I finally believed, as Freud put it, ‘To be completely honest with the self is the best effort a human can make.’ ”