Each generation of therapists can boast of only a few writers like Deborah Luepnitz, whose sympathy and wit shine through a fine, luminous prose. In Schopenhauer's Porcupines she recounts five true stories from her practice, stories of patients who range from the super-rich to the homeless and who grapple with panic attacks, psychosomatic illness, marital despair, and sexual recklessness. Intimate, original, and triumphantly funny, Schopenhauer's Porcupines goes further than any other book in unveiling the secrets of "how talking helps."

The paradox of the contemporary family is that it is both patriarchal and father-absent. Family therapists reproduce these problems by blaming mothers, protecting fathers, ignoring issues of race and class, and settling for superficial symptom relief. In The Family Interpreted, Deborah Anna Luepnitz proposes a new practice grounded in psychoana-lytic feminism. Since its publication in 1988, this intelligent, irreverent, and incorrigibly witty book has become a classic, admired by the therapeutic community and feminist scholars. Luepnitz's work has permanently altered the debate about families, culture, and psychological change.