The Long Wait and Other Psychoanalytic Narratives

These seven gracefully written case histories by a psychiatrist based in London have the intimacy of short stories. The cases are sprawling, unpredictable, messy, at loose ends, like real-life shrink sessions. The patients do most of the talking, yet Khan's therapeutic style, a mixture of banter, confrontation and occasional insult, comes through in his elegant prose. He tells Mr. Luis, a middle-aged, suicidal homosexual, ``You are not ill or sick or neurotic . . . just a mixed-up Yiddish kid.'' He helps Aisha, a high-born, sexually promiscuous Pakistani woman, to see that she ``had surrendered vast acreages of her person to others.'' Among the other patients are a successful businessman who performs foolish, outrageous antics, a young French girl obsessed with horses and a pregnant kindergarten teacher from Texas whose girlhood was marked by a gypsy-like existence. We watch in suspense as Khan helps these troubled individuals recognize their repressed desires and drives. (Feb.)