SOURCE: Shearer, Ann. Review of Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, by Janet Malcolm. New Statesman 103, no. 2658 (26 February 1982): 28.

In the following review, Shearer lauds Malcolm's probing of psychoanalysis in Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, contending that her examination of techniques used by analysts is enlightening.

No, but what do they really do in those 50-minute hours? Janet Malcolm's idea of setting her own lucid outline of Freud's theory against the confessions of one of his strict disciples works marvellously [in Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession], not just as a portrait of the man, but as a questioning of the creed he stands for.

The central mystery of the transference, without which nothing, may sound barmy to the unbeliever even after Janet Malcolm and Aaron Green, her pseudonymous interpreter, have done their best. But at the least it's one way of making sense of her own confession that she finds psychoanalysts ‘near-saints’—and...