Our Time is Up - by Roberta Satow (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Rose Winer is having panic attacks about a man climbing in the window and raping her. Returning to New York from Berkeley, where free love is rampant, she hopes that sleeping in her parents' house will make her feel safe. When that doesn't work, she begins psychoanalysis.

Through her turbulent relationship with her analyst, Joan Wiseman, Rose's life is changed forever. She is transformed from a wounded, angry, and insecure girl to a happily married psychoanalyst and university professor. But when her critical mother has a stroke and Joan gets cancer, all of Rose's progress is put to the test.

Part fiction, part memory, this book is an intimate look at psychoanalysis through the eyes of a patient and an analyst, based on Roberta Satow's experience as both. While there are many books about transference and countertransference in psychoanalysis, this book illustrates the depth of the connection between the patient and analyst, their experience of each other, and the curative effects of that relationship for both of them.

Review Quotes

This book is a treasure: a memoir-like novel that captures an era, an ethos, and a sociopolitical sensibility through the eyes of a young woman struggling with autonomy, guilt, sexuality, and grief in the late 1960s. Both patients and therapists will recognize their own struggles in this depiction of Rose's gradual blossoming in the sunlight of her analyst's honesty, integrity, and devotion. I know of no other work that conveys analytic treatment, training, and passion so intimately and in such a pitch perfect voice."

-NANCY MCWILLIAMS, PHD, ABPP, Emerita Visiting Professor, Rutgers Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology

"Our Time is Up is a profoundly moving dive into the nuance and beauty of the psychoanalytic relationship. Written with humor, compassion and an intimate understanding of the analytic process, the book shows love and loss and the true boundaries of time. I loved it!"

-VICTORIA MILLS, Psychoanalyst and Documentary filmmaker

"Our Time Is Up is a frank and refreshing fictionalized account of how a person comes, through psychoanalysis, to sit in the psychoanalyst's chair herself. It is the important and deeply personal story of an interior journey."

-LEE PHILLIPS, Psychoanalyst