The Taboo Scarf and Other Tales

More like stories than case studies, these accounts of therapeutic encounters by psychotherapist Weinberg ( The Heart of Psychotherapy ) reveal the idiosyncratic, often intricate, endlessly intriguing behaviors that limited the lives of nine of his patients, most met in his Manhattan practice. With alert ears, observant eye and, mainly, an engaged heart, Weinberg searches for clues to the hidden beliefs causing the pain or confusion that brought these people into his office. We follow the unraveling of a graduate student's inhibitions about marriage and kissing to marvel at the direct relationship between important elements of her early experiences to aspects of her personal style; we track the rages imperiling the pleasures of a hardware-store owner who loves music, the impetus for the self-destructive workaholism of a Wall Street numbers cruncher. Equally present, because the process is a mutual one, is Weinberg himself, whose continuing struggle to balance involvement and detachment is as absorbing as the mysteries of his patients. (Aug.)