Curious Stories of Diverse Places - by Richard Reichbart (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Some background. I am a psychologist and psychoanalyst. For the past thirty years, I have been in private practice, treating children, adolescents and adults in Ridgewood, New Jersey, a suburban town not too far from New York City.

I have had experiences which figure in some of these stories. Before becoming a psychoanalyst, I was an attorney who lived and worked on the Navajo and Hopi reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. I also represented Native Americans in Denver, Colorado.

In addition, . I was a civil rights worker in 1965 for the Southern Christian Leadership Council, Martin Luther King's organization, primarily working out of Atlanta and also in Fort Valley, Georgia, a small town south of Atlanta. For that matter, I have always enjoyed diverse culture, and have often tried on vacations to explore other cultures than my own, which also figures in some of these stories.

Last, I have an abiding interest in parapsychology or the study of psychic phenomena. I have written academically on the subject and taught it and advocated that psychoanalysts and mental health professionals in general be more aware of these phenomena. Psychic phenomena plays a role in a few of the stories contained here.

The short stories and poems were written after a work day of seeing patients or on weekends. In ways that are not at all obvious, my patients over the years have inspired some of them, In psychoanalysis, in writing short stories, in crafting poetry, my hope has always been to approach the intimate heart of our lives and of living, with both its terror and beauty; and to question our Western society assumptions of how our world (and our being in it) is constructed. Psychoanalysis, parapsychology, anthropology, and short stories and poems -- at their best -- lead to us wonder about the world. Hopefully, this collection will inspire the reader to wonder too.

Review Quotes

"A vivid collection of very differently pegged stories. A contemporary updating of David Lean's unforgettable "Brief Encounter, "Dank" is a credible and moving fiction about a middle-aged man who, after experiencing sexual liberation in idyllic rural France, comes home to his wife with renewed maturity. "Boxball" is a stunning exploration of the loaded vulnerabilities of male competitiveness. The brief final story, "Termination," is a fitting and eloquent end to the collection. Each of the fictions here dramatize their characters' vulnerabilities in ways that are both familiar and enlightening. An impressive achievement. Read this book."

--Robert J. Seidman, author of One Smart Indian and Moments Captured

"This beautiful book is a travelogue written by someone who has been to exotic places, lived in them, and learned. But the most moving part of the book is the interior travel that sends the reader careening around loss, sorrow, love, a frozen inability to love, and redemption. The stories and poems stay with you."

--Arlene Kramer Richards, poet & member, AIP, IPTAR, APA, & IPA, author of Psychoanalysis: Listening to Understand, and The Laundryman's Granddaughter