Kelly Writers House Fellows 2013: Janet Malcolm March 18-19th

available as an ebook

Janet Malcolm brings her shrewd intelligence to bear on the legend of Sylvia Plath and the wildly productive industry of Plath biographies.

In two previous books, Janet Malcolm explored the hidden sides of, respectively, institutional psychoanalysis and Freudian biography. In this book, she examines the psychopathology of journalism.

Through an intensive study of Aaron Green, a Freudian analyst in New York City, Janet Malcolm reveals the inner workings of psychoanalysis.

In November 1984, Jeffrey Masson filed a libel suit against writer Janet Malcolm and the New Yorker, claiming that Malcolm had intentionally misquoted him in a profile she wrote for the magazine about his former career as a Freud scholar and administrator of the Freud archives. Over the next twelve years the case moved up and down the federal judicialladder, ultimately reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, as lawyers and judges wrestled with questions about the representation of "truth" in journalism and, by extension, the limits of First Amendment protections of free speech.