Like Parisians, shrinks leave town in August. If they're New York shrinks, they flock to the Hamptons, where for one brief month no patients interrupt their lives. The patients, meanwhile, must fend for themselves. Along with the shorter breaks at Christmas and Easter, the recurrence of the August hiatus lends a rhythm to both sides of the psychoanalytic relationship. Enduring it or delighting in it, patient and analyst must somehow come to terms with August—the ritualized intrusion of time into the timeless world of the analytic session.

Judith Rossner's new novel takes its title and form from this fact of psychoanalytic sociology. Famous as a clinician of disordered minds—most memorably in "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" and "Emmeline"—Mrs. Rossner … turns her attention [in "August"] to the scene where disorders are supposed to get rectified. In meticulous detail, she narrates the five-year analysis of Dawn Henley by...