'The novel: a survival skill' offers a completely new account of the relationship between writer, text, and reader. Drawing on ideas from systemic psychology and positioning theory, Parks suggests that both the content and style of a novelist's work, the kind of stories told, and the way in which they are told, form part of a more general strategy of suvival that the novelist has developed in reaponse to tensions within his or her family of origin....

"Focusing on some of the best known characters in all of literature - chosen to trace the arc from childhood to old age - a brilliant psychoanalyst and professor of literature shows how our inner lives become at once stranger and more familiar when seen through the prism of fiction. In supple and elegant prose, and with all the expertise and insight of his dual profession, Josh Cohen illuminates a new way to understand ourselves. He helps us see what...