Memoir of a Psychoanalyst’s Wife

Book excerpt: Much has been written about the lives of male physician psychoanalysts, but little has been recorded about their wives and families who travel with them through their long medical training experience. In Memoir of a Psychoanalyst’s Wife, author Jane Linker Schwartz offers a look at her life and how psychoanalysis helped shape her during the twentieth century. As a nonagenarian and part-time psychotherapist, her long life reaches back to 1925. Schwartz lived through the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the aftermath of those turbulent years. During the 1960s and 1970s, she was a young, white, middle-class American woman married to a psychiatrist-psychoanalyst. Her collected memories throughout the years are mixed with a strong flavor of the history of American psychoanalysis. While sharing Schwartz’ personal story, this memoir also chronicles the changes that took place in the twentieth century when the Women’s Movement questioned the role of the traditional wife and mother as it was affected by professional ambitions outside the home. It examines competition between married partners regarding professional status and whose work was more important. It also traces changes in women’s behavior toward home responsibilities and children.