April 8, 2024
Psychologist Levine (Waking the Tiger) discusses in this stark if disjointed memoir how surviving sexual assault shaped his practice. “The writing of these pages was originally meant to serve as a private excavation of hidden and disowned parts of myself,” Levine begins, but after a vivid dream in which he scattered a stack of papers to the wind, he decided to publish this account. When Levine was 12, he was sexually assaulted by a Bronx gang with ties to the mafia in an attempt to dissuade his father from testifying against a mob boss. In the aftermath, he began having strange dreams that included abstract images and, most strikingly, encounters with Albert Einstein. Much of the book focuses on how the assault pointed Levine toward the development of an alternative therapy practice called somatic experiencing, in which subjects are encouraged to shore up positive feelings in the body before excavating past trauma. Interspersed among lengthy sections detailing the workings of somatic experiencing are anecdotes about Levine’s mother, his encounters with scientists including pioneering autism therapist Mira Rothenberg, and musings on his “visits” from Einstein. While there are brave disclosures in these pages, the project is pitched too uneasily between self-promotion and self-examination. This doesn’t quite cohere.
The developer of somatic experiencing examines the series of events in his life that led to his understanding of trauma and healing. Levine, a psychotherapist, declares the purpose of his memoir as twofold: to help others overcome their traumas and to finally be able to fully let go of his own. Throughout the narrative, the author explains how all of the significant moments of his life have led to his position as the "prophet" of somatic experiencing, a practice Levine describes as an "evolving healing method... named for the experience of the sensing, living body." The practice is not, he states, an "exclusively formulaic or a codified protocol, but rather an unfolding organic process that involves basic principles and building blocks." As such, it is difficult to teach and to study. Still, the author's students have trained over 60,000 people to treat patients using the method. Levine connects the many traumatic aspects of his life, including physical and emotional abuse he experienced from his parents, to his discovery of precepts from Navajo and Buddhist traditions that he adapted to his work. (The book helpfully begins with a trigger warning, as Levine discusses personal trauma including sexual assault.) The writing is strongest in the connections the author makes between the physical and spiritual realms; Levine recalls a trip to Germany during which he experienced a vision of "red flowing down" on a certain street, only to find out later that it was the site of student revolutionaries' executions during the Nazi regime. While the memoir's narrative sections are strong, occasionally the transitions between ideas are less so, as when the author jumps from the story about Germany to an account of confronting his own racial biases. While the various segments are compelling and insightful, the connections between them could have been made clearer. A personal and revealing (if slightly scattered) memoir from a trailblazing therapist.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)