Best known to millions as the courageous therapist in Joanne Greenberg's chronicle of madness and recovery, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1889-1957) is a fascinating and controversial figure. She is credited with accomplishing what Freud thought impossible: successfully treating psychotics and schizophrenics with intensive psychotherapy, not drugs. Numerous researchers have attempted to study her life but, the dearth of records and personal effects thwarted each attempt to penetrate the myth. Now Gail Hornstein's relentless, ten-year pursuit of every trace of Fromm-Reichmann's life has culminated in the long-awaited liberation of the actual facts and history from the fictionalized doctor in...Rose Garden.
Using these newly discovered family records and a rich archive of tape-recorded sessions with patients, Hornstein illuminates a fascinating life. Fromm-Reichmann, born into an Orthodox German Jewish family, believed that every person is worth saving. The story of her education and early psychiatric practice, her complex marriage to Erich Fromm (the celebrated author of The Art of Loving), her dramatic escape from Nazi Germany, and her intense relationships and rivalries with major psychoanalysts makes for truly compelling reading.
