Psyche

An ambitious and intriguing debut, this novel opens in 1939, when Sigmund Freud obtains the diaries of one of his first patients and decides to combine them with his own journals about her treatment. The paired narratives, written between 1886 and 1888, artfully alternate between Freud's terse but increasingly troubled reflections and Lucy's frantic, overwrought outpourings. They portray a time before Freud formulated the principles of psychoanalysis, when he was enamored of hypnosis, addicted to cocaine and desperate for fame. Father-fixated 16-year-old Lucy D seems to hold the key to his career; under hypnosis, she relives the story of Atalanta, Meleager and the Caledonian Boar Hunt, revealing the female-centered mythology predating Homer that had been suppressed by a patriarchal society. While Freud gropes for a way to use myth as an explanation, Lucy's Aunt Sophia (wife of Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered Troy) celebrates myth as a realm of ecstatic knowledge, prompting the doctor to inquiries that will shape his later life. Knowledge of those subsequent years enriches the story, for the young Freud is callous, manipulative and far from self-aware, quite unlike the mature genius whose renown his youthful self can only yearn for. Michalos has written an intelligent, interesting novel that not only humanizes Freud but also uses myth to demythologize Freudian analysis. Psychotherapy Book Club selection; author tour. ( Aug. )