We Want So Much to Be Ourselves - by Stephen O'Connor (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A German psychoanalyst, his Jewish wife, and their young daughter are swept up in the rising tide of fascism

Günter Zeitz, psychoanalyst-in-training and the son of a Catholic country doctor, and Josine Rosen, Sigmund Freud's patient and the daughter of a Jewish shipping magnate, first meet in 1924, in Freud's Viennese waiting room. As their intense affair develops, Freud arranges for Günter's appointment to the newly created Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Shortly after the move, their daughter Hannah is born. But less than a decade later, all their hopes and ideals are profoundly challenged by political realities so horrific that they are, initially, beyond comprehension.

A heartrending story of love in a time of hatred, an absorbing investigation into the Nazis' exploitation of psychoanalysis, and a cautionary tale about self-deception and the failures of a people to recognize the lies of their charismatic leader, We Want So Much to Be Ourselves examines the ways science can be corrupted and one's very identity transformed by historical circumstance.

Review Quotes

Praise for We Want So Much to Be Ourselves

"In beautiful, unsentimental prose, this gripping novel asks, Who is complicit in times of evil? Who resists? And how can ordinary life and love carry on in the face of madness? A fraught love affair and the omnipresent threat of violence make this a tense and propulsive story. Rich in fascinating historical detail, ideas, and psychological insight, O'Connor's story brims with compassion, and sounds a warning siren." --Kate Manning, author of My Notorious Life and Gilded Mountain

"We Want So Much to Be Ourselves is a vivid, sorrowing novel about the power of ideas. As Nazi ideology rises, the story conveys the compromises and sacrifices of a decent man faced with the impossible. It does what Stephen O'Connor has long done in his work--trace the interior path of moral trouble, with all its inherent suspense. A really superb book." --Joan Silber, author of Improvement and Mercy

Select Praise for Stephen O'Connor & Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

"An epic read." --Jesmyn Ward

"A brilliant, huge-hearted act of the moral imagination. O'Connor has written a kind of quantum historical novel--simultaneously fiction and nonfiction, wave and particle." --Karen Russell

"Expansive, riveting, and startlingly original. . . . A richly imagined meditation on the human capacity for self-deception and on that troubling zone between exploitation and love." --Christina Baker Kline

"Brave and wondrous. . . . A fascinating, complex and ultimately extremely addictive tale." --Jean Zimmerman, NPR

"What a dazzling experience this book is for the intrepid reader. . . . It's heartbreaking. It's cathartic. It's utterly brilliant." --Ron Charles, Washington Post

"Prismatic and utterly arresting." --Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

"Stunning. . . . Like all great literature, there are no absolute heroes or villains." --Mary Ann Gwinn, Seattle Times

"[O'Connor's] vision of romance in a society defined by division is wrenching, and proof that dreaming can expose reality better than any hard truth." --Mark Athitakis, Minnesota Star Tribune

About the Author

Stephen O'Connor is the author of seven books including two novels, Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings and We Want So Much to Be Ourselves, and the short story collection Here Comes Another Lesson. His fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and Best American Short Stories, among other publications, and his nonfiction has been published in the New York Times, Nation, Boston Globe, and elsewhere. He teaches fiction and nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Manhattan.