Sigmund Freud described denial as one of the ego’s defenses against intolerable psychological pain. His daughter, Anna Freud, expanded this idea, suggesting that denial can sometimes be a necessary and even adaptive part of healthy development rather than simply a pathological symptom. We often think of denial as something to overcome, but from a psychological perspective, it can also serve as a temporary shelter until we are emotionally prepared to face a more difficult reality.

Psychoanalytic theorists have traditionally understood denial as an intrapsychic defense, while relational and family therapists like me are often equally interested in the stories families create together. Families don’t simply pass down memories; they pass down narratives. These shared stories help regulate anxiety and shape how family members understand themselves, one another, and the events that define them. They are rarely outright lies. More often, they are incomplete.

Exploring Family Narratives in Ann Patchett’s ‘Whistler’

Ann Patchett’s enchanting new novel Whistler can be read through this lens. At its heart, the novel explores one family’s shared narrative and what happens when its members become emotionally ready to revisit the unfinished parts of the stories they have carried since childhood.

Our protagonist, Daphne, is immediately lovable and relatable. The novel begins when she unexpectedly encounters an important figure from her past, setting into motion a gradual reexamination of her childhood alongside her sister, her husband, and several other key figures. Rather than uncovering shocking secrets, Daphne slowly revises her understanding of experiences she has carried with her for decades. The story unfolds less like a mystery than an emotional excavation, with each conversation peeling back another layer of meaning.

The Psychological Purpose of Incomplete Family Stories

What makes Whistler so psychologically compelling is that Patchett never suggests Daphne’s childhood understanding was false. As children, we construct narratives that help us make sense of experiences we are not yet developmentally equipped to fully understand. Families often do the same. The stories they tell—and sometimes the stories they avoid telling—serve an important purpose. They help contain anxiety until everyone is capable of tolerating greater complexity.

As Daphne revisits a dramatic accident from her past, she isn’t simply discovering facts that were hidden from her. She is developing the capacity to hold a fuller, richer, and more nuanced version of the truth. Equally important, the other members of her family are becoming ready to do the same. Together, they co-create a new understanding of themselves and of one another.

One of Patchett’s many strengths is that she allows this transformation to unfold without judgment. There are no villains, no saints, and no tidy psychological explanations. Instead, she portrays deeply decent people doing the best they could with the emotional resources they had at the time. As readers, we are invited to extend the same compassion to them that therapists hope to extend to the individuals, couples, and families we have the honor to work with.

Revisiting Old Narratives for Healing

Therapy often brings people back to stories they have told about themselves for decades. We sometimes imagine that healing comes from uncovering long-hidden secrets. More often, it comes from developing the emotional capacity to revisit familiar stories with new eyes. The facts may not change, but our ability to hold them does.

Perhaps that is Whistler’s greatest psychological insight. Sometimes healing isn’t learning that our childhood story was wrong. It’s becoming emotionally ready to discover that it was incomplete.

So when a client tells me a book moved him, I listen. When several clients mention the same book, I consider it part of my continuing education. And when my adult daughter brings Heart the Lover by Lily King on vacation and can’t put it down, I pay attention.

I came to this novel without having read King’s companion book, Writers & Lovers. I will likely circle back. But Heart the Lover stands beautifully on its own—a work of elegant prose that captures both the innocence and the psychological complexity of young adulthood.

We follow a protagonist whose name is withheld until the final pages, a choice that feels psychologically intentional. Identity, after all, is not fixed in youth—it is constructed, tested, defended, and revised in relationship. Within an intoxicating circle of collegiate friends who both intimidate and inspire her, she becomes “Jordan,” a version of herself that feels braver, sharper, more socially fluent. She falls into a love triangle that ultimately crystallizes into something deeper: a connection between two ambitious, idealistic young people who want their lives to matter.
What unfolds is tender and devastating in equal measure. King captures something rare: the almost sacred intensity of first adult love. It is fragile. It is precarious. It is infused with longing and projection. And it is often unsustainable—not because the love is false, but because the people inside it are still becoming.

That is where the novel feels especially relevant to my work as a therapist.

Heart the Lover is not simply a romance. It is a study in development. It shows how profoundly we are shaped by our families—by what was spoken, and what was not; by what was expected, and what was silently demanded. The characters are intelligent and sincere. They want to love well. But wanting and being ready are not the same thing.

Many young adults carry into romance unresolved family dynamics, unexamined fears, and unconscious loyalties. The capacity for intimacy requires differentiation—the ability to remain oneself while moving toward another. And that capacity often lags behind longing.

What I admire most about King’s writing is her portrayal of the approach–avoidance dance so common in love: the simultaneous pull toward closeness and retreat from it. In one scene, the narrator waits at baggage claim for the man she loves. Her anticipation is electric; her body is alive with sensation. Yet she recognizes a quiet truth: if he fully understood the depth of her love, it would terrify him.
That moment captures something universal. Intimacy exposes us. To be loved is to be seen. And to be seen can feel dangerous when we are still uncertain of ourselves.

Alongside this exquisite rendering of young love, King writes with unusual clarity about existential awakening. Her characters metabolize pain in real time. They feel it in their bodies. They struggle with it. And through it, they become more conscious, more deliberate, more themselves.

As both a therapist and a mother of adult children, I find myself moved by that arc. Youthful love is rarely tidy. It can be misguided, misaligned, or mistimed. And yet it is formative. It shapes the nervous system. It clarifies values. It exposes vulnerabilities that must eventually be integrated.
In that way, heartbreak is not the opposite of growth. It is often its catalyst.

And perhaps that is why so many of my clients—and my daughter—pressed this book into my hands. It does what good fiction does best: it illuminates the private terrain of becoming.

“Do any human beings every realize life while they live it?”

I saw Thornton Wilder’s 1928 Pulitzer Prize winning play Our Town at some point during my childhood and remembered it vaguely. Mostly I remembered that the plot followed two young people in a small town falling in love and that the boy loved baseball. I recently read Ann Patchett’s new novel, Tom Lake, which centers around various productions of this play. Patchett’s novel shares Our Town’s emphasis on the theme that life happens most profoundly during our small daily moments. Reading this novel, I realized it was time to revisit the play.

My curiosity was well timed, as Kenny Leon’s production at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre opened recently though the production plans have been in the works for this ensemble since the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that this production was, in part, conceptualized during the stay-at-home orders is interesting, given the play’s emphasis on quiet moments, stillness, and the passage of time. This is Our Town’s fifth return to Broadway.

There is so much to say about this superb production led by Jim Parson’s fearless performance as the stage manager. His take is edgy and somewhat sardonic and thus sets the stage for an unsentimental unfolding which ironically leads the audience to especially emotional and heartfelt conclusions.

The play’s three acts — Daily Life (set in 1901), Love and Marriage (set in 1904) and a final act set 9 years later in the local cemetery – unfold during a gripping 80 minutes with no intermission. The simple earnest arc of daily life makes all the characters in the small, fictional, New England town of Grover’s Corners seem vulnerable and deeply human. This play challenges us to understand that we cry during weddings and graduations and life’s grander milestones in part because we are all unbearably vulnerable. We never know what life will throw at us during the journey of the everyday small moments that define the arc of a life. If only the mysteries of the line between life and death were clearer, we might be able to learn from our loved ones who are no longer with us. And we might even see each other more lucidly and with even more compassion and love.

Reading or viewing this play would be a wonderful way to begin 2025 with renewed awe and abandon.

Ann Patchett’s 2023 novel, Tom Lake, is a relationally-oriented therapist’s dream. A love letter both to northern Michigan’s cherry farms and to small-town family life, Patchett’s novel unpacks how greater emotional maturity is conducive to choosing healthier, more sustainable romantic partnerships.

The novel begins during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic while protagonist Lara is quarantining with her three daughters and her husband on their cherry farm in northern Michigan. With the world at a standstill, Lara’s daughters insist that she finally share with them the story from her early adulthood when she dated a young actor who went on to become the world’s most famous movie star. Lara’s three daughters worship the devastatingly handsome Peter Duke and demand that their mother finally give them the backstory. Reluctantly, and with strict and entertaining boundaries, Lara agrees.

What unfolds is a moving tale of a young, innocent and unassuming girl plucked from small town life in part because of her uncanny ability to portray small-town life through her performance in the lead role (Emily) in various productions of Thornton Wilder’s classic play Our Town. Lara’s youthful whirlwind romance with Duke is a classic Hollywood tale of innocence lost and how the spotlight of fame corrupts and contorts. Tom Lake’s plot toggles between Lara’s quarantine with her close-knit family and the complexities of life on the farm and Lara’s detailed description of her years as a young, unsuspecting, aspiring starlet. Heartache, sibling rivalry, and family love are concurrent themes, and Our Town’s cherishment of the wholesomeness of small-town life works as a convincing psychological template for emotional maturity and the beauty of healthy choices and a quiet, connected, authentic life.

The late Shirley Glass, a prominent infidelity researcher, encouraged an ideal script at the outset. Her suggestion is that when a married person notices a spark with another, it is highly advisable to discuss this spark with one’s spouse. To say something like:

“I was having coffee with Lucy today and I felt surprised that our conversation quickly became both personal and flirtatious. I was also surprised that I enjoyed it. It reminded me of how you and I used to be with one another, and I want to try to get that back. Can we work on that?”

If only more married adults chose to run this script.

Elizabeth Stroud’s latest novel, Tell Me Everything, is one of her very best. In a showcase that feels something like a finale, she allows her beloved, previously unacquainted characters from her various critically acclaimed series to intersect and collide with one another in the small town of Crosby, Maine. Set during the later part of the pandemic, the novel begins with the meek, brilliant novelist Lucy Barton having recently befriended the angsty attorney Bob Burgess. The friendship has become romantic, though Lucy and Bob remain in denial of their palpable romantic spark. They believe they are good friends and insist their frequent walks are covid-friendly and purely platonic. Quirky local fixture Olive Kitteridge (of Stroud’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name) understands the blossoming romance between Lucy and Bob and easily sees straight through their blind spots. Olive’s friendships with Lucy and Bob animate the novel as does the plot’s unfolding murder mystery.

Stroud understands that intimate life happens in the small quiet moments rather than the large romantic gestures. Lucy and Bob cherish their deep unfiltered conversations. Lucy calls Bob a sin eater because she understands that Bob has sacrificed to much for others, especially his older brother. Lucy opens up about her impoverished and abusive childhood:

“But I don’t remember feeling envious a lot, Bob, and I don’t understand that. You would think, I would think, that I would have been envious of people from the start, all these mothers who seemed to love their children as they picked them up from school, all those kids who seemed to have normal lives, but I just somehow understood: That’s not my life. And I was always inside my head, and I remember thinking: I’m glad this is my head.”

Even Bob’s bad haircut illuminates the intricacy and hilarity of the human connection. He and Lucy both agree that it makes him look like a twelve-year-old with a man’s face, and their dual experiences of this unfortunate new style represent their powerful connection and the unexpected path forward.

Bob loves his wife, the minister of their local church. And Lucy loves her ex-husband William. Lucy and William reconnected during the pandemic and are giving it another go. Despite these satisfying unions, the chemistry fueling Lucy and Bob’s conversations anchor the plot and transfix these two central characters.

Emotional repairs, infidelity, betrayal, sexual abuse, neglect, isolation, therapy and memory are all important themes explored with rich emotional intelligence. And yet, as a therapist, what stays with me most about this beautiful story is its exploration of the road not taken.

Dear Edward toggles between two stories. One follows a 183 passenger morning flight from Newark to LA packed with a dynamic cast of characters — an ailing billionaire, a tounge pierced misfit who discovers she is pregnant while testing in the plane’s compact bathroom, a hippy in a jingle skirt who is leaving her husband to embrace a new roller blading lifestyle, a gay soldier struggling with his identify, a conceited econ bro and an impossibly glamourous flight attendant. And then there’s the Adler family – Bruce (a math professor who recently did not make tenure) Jane, a frustrated but successful writer, Jordan a vegan teen missing his first love and twelve-year-old Edward. The flight is intimate, humorous and relatable to anyone who has ever crammed themselves through a tight squeeze on a plane in order to attempt to not awakening a sleeping seatmate in order to reach the aisle and head to the toilet. Readers experience a robust tribute to the simultaneous excitement and compromised dignity of air travel, and there is no indication that the plane will implode other than the alternating chapters about Edward’s life in the crash’s aftermath.

The second tale begins in the hospital after the crash and navigates young Edward’s traumatic grief. Edward’s shellshocked aunt and uncle struggle to raise and care for him. Uncle John and Aunt Lacey experience years of infertility and limited exposure to child rearing before inheriting responsibility for their nephew who has become an internet and world-wide obsession. His devastating pain and grief are met by an engaging community of characters who rally around him to varying degrees. Neighbors, a principle, a coach, and a reasonable great therapist offer lessons in healing wounds that will never entirely disappear.

Sibling bonds are central to both plot threads. Edward wears his dead older brother’s clothing for years, despite the inappropriate sizing. And in a particularly heartbreaking moment – one of many scattered throughout the novel — Edward longs for his mother as his Aunt Lacey attempts to nurture him:

Edward nods and is surprised that as she leaves the kitchen, she bends down and kisses his cheek. It’s a gentle kiss, and she ruffles his hair on the way up. He’s surprised party because Lacey rarely kisses him but also because the moment separates, the way the individual clous did in the sky and the threads of grass did on the ground. He sees – and feels – two separate realities. Lacey kisses his cheek the exact same way his mother had kissed Edward’s cheek when she was alive. The kiss feels deliberate and intentional; Lacey can’t write her sister’s movie, but this is something she can do. But she also kisses his cheek the way Lacey would have kissed the cheek of the baby she had so badly wanted. Edward knows this, even though he can’t explain how. The word cherish enters his brain as if on a foreign breeze and then departs…

In her acknowledgments, Napolitano explains that her book was inspired by the 2010 crash of Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 in which all passengers died except for one surviving nine-year-old boy. She also drew from the details of Air France Flight 447 and a 2011 article in Popular Mechanics detailing the crash. She shares that her additional inspiration was her personal observations about the love that transpires between her own two sons. The author’s palpable awe of sibling love and passion for travel despite it’s remote but real risks come alive in all corners of this beautiful novel. Take it in the air if you dare, it’s a magical read.

Sadie is a gifted, determined, Jewish mathlete making her way in a man’s world where the gamers dominating the field often embody as much toxic masculinity as the characters in their games. Sadie’s grandmother is a holocaust survivor. Sam and Marx are both half Asian. In addition to being mixed race and estranged from his biological father, Sam has a chronically ailing foot that leaves him crippled and eventually amputated. Otherness and trauma are thematic threads that bind this gaming trio.
The book is also a love letter to artists – the title itself a Shakespeare reference alluding to the artistic elements necessary to create any truly great work of art including a meaningful video game.

What makes this love story most unusual (and somewhat heartbreaking) is its focus on what it means to be professionally in love as souldmate collaborators who do not consummate a romance, but rather engage in a relationship that lives and breathes in the creative realm rather than the romantic. What does it mean to make magnificent wholly original creative work as an authentic team. What is it like to love, live and breathe the work – without consummating a romantic path? Sadie and Sam meet and befriend one another while playing video games as children in a hospital game room. And Sadie’s somewhat OCD betrayal of Sam leads to a multi-year estrangement that is interrupted when they run into one another as college students in Boston. Gaming once again brings them together. Their collaboration lasts decades and includes all sorts of slights and pain points and highs and lows that mimic the arc of a married life.

The therapist in me can’t help but root for the romance, but the book’s captivating appeal challenges conventional psychological thinking about love, marriage, careers and relationships. Gabrielle Zevin successfully tells a flourishing, memorable love story that is a true original.

Lessons in Chemistry revolves around a remarkable female scientist whose ambitions are hindered by the pervasive effects of workplace sexism. Despite her passion and qualifications, she faces barriers that prevent her from developing her scientific talents and pursuing her professional dreams head-on. However, she refuses to be deterred and instead cleverly applies her scientific knowledge to the world of cooking, leading to unexpected success.
At the heart of plot and its conflicts sublimation surfaces as a recurring theme. Sublimation involves metabolizing traumatic experiences by taking something painful and transforming its adversity into constructive outlets. In this captivating story, the lead character encounters obstacles that initially block her scientific aspirations. The novel shines a bright and unflattering light on sexism in the workplace and the longstanding challenges for women pursuing STEM. Undeterred, she adapts her scientific expertise to the culinary sphere, transforming her ambition into the creation of a remarkable cooking show.

Our heroine not only embodies the power of sublimation, she references it in her understanding of others. In a particularly beautiful passage she explains her beloved partner’s life journey to her daughter:

“Sometimes bad things happen. This is a fact of life…Your father…. was raised without a family, without parents he could count on, without the protection and love every child is entitled to. But he persevered. Often the best way to deal with the bad is to turn it on end – use it as a strength, refuse to allow the bad thing to define you. Fight it. ”

Throughout the novel, Zott uses setbacks as springboards for personal growth. Her frustration fuels her motivation, leading to a reinvention of her path and ultimately culminating in success in an unexpected domain. Each twist on Zott’s path hails the values of professional integrity and serves as a testament to the potential of sublimation as a powerful tool for transforming adversity into personal triumph. By showcasing the protagonist’s resilience, determination, and ability to adapt, the book inspires readers to reflect on personal challenges and discover innovative ways to redirect energies toward positive outcomes.

Science, psychology, and personal growth collide in this captivating and entertaining tale underscoring the significance of adapting to life’s obstacles and harnessing the power of transformation. As readers immerse themselves in the protagonist’s journey, we are encouraged to reconsider our own challenges, viewing them as opportunities for personal reinvention and growth.

This phrase – despite and because of its grammatical flaw – was written and spoken and repeated by several social work professors in my early graduate training. A willingness to refrain from my own agenda in order to respect and deeply probe the psychological space and experience of my therapy clients is essential to my own clinical practice. Clinicians employ therapeutic strategies that allow us to challenge and guide and inject theory. But at the core of effective therapeutic work, the clinician must possess the emotional flexibility to respect each client’s unique reality and perspective.

Atul Gawande’s magnificent bestselling book,Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” frames an approach to end-of-life decision making and care that respects this essential social work guiding principle. A surgeon and staff writer for The New Yorker and a professor at Harvard Medical School, Gawande has authored several bestselling books. Being Mortal explores how the trajectory of modern medicine’s success revolutionizing the dangers of birth and management of disease has evolved to a pattern of extending life above all else. Sometimes life is extended with blatant or even negligent disregard for patient preferences and priorities.

The problem with medicine and the institutions It has spawned for the care of the sick and the old is not that they have had an incorrect view of what makes life significant. The problem is that they have had almost no view at all. Medicine’s focus is narrow. Medical professionals concentrate on repair of health, not sustenance of the soul. Yet – and this is the painful paradox – we have decided that they should be the ones who largely define how we live in our waning days. For more than a century now, we have treated the trials of sickness, aging, and mortality as medical concerns. It’s been an experiment in social engineering, putting our fates in the hands of people valued more for their technical prowess than for their understanding of human needs.

Gawande masterfully challenges this default experiment. He points to creative approaches to senior living like infusing care facilities with plants and pets and farm animals. He does a deep and illuminating dive into hospice care and calls for providers to take the time to explore and respect each patient’s priorities. He features the palliative care specialist Susan Block as a moral compass with the potential to reframe the approach to end of life care:

“You have to understand,” Block told me. “A family meeting is a procedure, and it requires no less skill than performing an operation.” One basic mistake is conceptual. To most doctors, the primary purpose of a discussion about terminal illness is to determine what people want – whether they want chemo or not, whether they want to be resuscitated or not, whether they want hospice or not… “A large part of the task is helping people negotiate the over-whelming anxiety – anxiety about death, anxiety about suffering, anxiety about loved ones, anxiety about finances…” No one conversation can address them all. Arriving at an acceptance of one’s mortality and a clear understanding of the limits and the possibilities of medicine is a process, not an epiphany…The words you use matter. According to palliative specialists, you shouldn’t say, “I’m sorry things turned out this way,” for example, it can sound like you are distancing yourself. You should say, “I wish things were different.” You don’t ask, “What do you want when you are dying?” You ask, “If time becomes short, what is most important to you?”

Gems of knowledge like the above quotations are laced throughout Being Mortal’s brave mining of the difficult topic of terminal illness and the near taboo topics of dying and death. This difficult, illuminating, transformational read enhances my clinical skills and reminds me that being where the client is at is a lifelong, essential goal.

The book jacket for Diary of a Mad Housewife describes the novel as “a classic of urban women’s fiction that gave a wry voice to the nascent feminist stirrings of the 1960s.” I’m not sure how I missed it on my mother’s bookshelf while growing up in the 70s, but she confirms that it was right there all along with prominent placement. This engrossing page-turner eventually became a popular Academy Award nominated film, and is full of extremes. Both hilarious and heartbreaking, Sue Kaufman’s best-selling novel paints a portrait of city life in the 1960s that demonstrates how much has changed and how much has stayed the same.

Despite how often characters telephone local shops and charge groceries to their monthly tabs, and a 200 dollar business suit described as an obscene expense, the novel reads as remarkably current. Kaufman’s take on the challenges of motherhood, identity, marriage, and sexual intimacy withstands the test of time.

We meet the novel’s protagonist, Betina (or “Teen” as her husband Jonathan calls her), when she decides to keep a diary as a fitful attempt to cope with the escalating pressures and chaos of her life as a Manhattan housewife. Betina hopes that journaling will help her make sense of her aggressive social life and growing discomfort with the family’s superficial trajectory. She knows she needs help and she finds reading as therapeutic (and comic) as journaling. D.H. Lawrence is among her comforts, as she enjoys the satirical timing while reading as her husband readies himself for bed:

“What is more, she felt she had always really disliked him. Not hate: there was no passion in it. But a profound physical dislike. Almost it seemed to her, she married him because she disliked him, in a secret, physical sort of way. But of course, she had married him really because in a mental way he attracted her and excited her. He had seemed, in some way, her master, beyond her.” I read it three times, and was going over it a forth when Jonathan came out of the bathroom and got into bed. I sat gripping the book, waiting: it was exactly the sort of ironic moment for him to propose a Roll in the Hay. It never failed.

Betina’s diary guides readers through excessive substance use, an extramarital affair, way too many taxi rides, and a slew of raucous cocktail parties that might make certain middle-aged readers feel a little bit boring! At its most depressing, the diary is testament to how easily financial success can lead families down a superficial and dismal path. But the novel’s conclusion feels modestly hopeful and alludes to the possibility that therapy can be worthwhile, even with a substandard therapist. Reading and journaling are, indeed, therapuetic, and authentic change is possible. This cheeky novel captivated readers when published in 1967, and can be healthy bibliotherapy for mothers navigating multiple relationship challenges.