The Summons of Love
The self-help field is saturated with books on love, yet Mari Ruti's book,The Summons of Love, is in a class by itself -- elegantly and beautifully written, superior in every way.(Henry Kellerman, psychologist, psychoanalyst, and author ofLove Is Not Enough: What It Takes To Make It WorkandThe 4 Steps to Peace of Mind: The Simple Effective Way to Cure Our Emotional Symptoms)The Summons of Lovedistills decades of psychoanalytic wisdom into a graceful, engaging, and eminently useful exploration of the ups and downs of romantic love. Whether a veteran or novice in the ways of love, the reader takes away an enriched understanding of what it means to invest in deep relating.(Margaret Crastnopol, psychoanalyst and clinical instructor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington)Ruti is simultaneously clarifying and obscuring, perhaps inevitably in keeping with her subject.(Publishers Weekly)A psychological look at love relationships and their pragmatic benefits that cleverly blends scientific language and romantic concepts.(Kirkus Reviews)offers a series of wonderfully counterintuitive insights about what one learns from love and pain and sadness one must sometimes endure to get it, keep it, and survive it.(Choice)Mari Ruti's The Summons of Love is a self-help book with a unique twist: it's grounded in Lacanian psychoanalysis. The insertion of high theory into the advice-book genre is on its face wildly audacious. In its execution, Ruti's book offers a very smart and perceptive discussion of love, and I recommend it highly.(David SiglerFoucault Studies1900-01-00)