The Dream Interpreters: A Psychoanalytic Novel in Verse by Howard Shevrin

Before there was In Treatment, or even Be’Tipul, there was The Dream Interpreters. Howard Shevrin tells an intimate tale through the prism of seven psychoanalyses.
Shevrin says that he has written a novel with psychoanalysis itself as the protagonist, a novel in which the inner pulse of analytic work reveals itself…  Written in free verse, it reads easily, at times like prose, at times like a well explicated play. This is an enlightening book for all mental health professionals as well as any reader interested in psychological motivation.

Almost all of the action is confined to the consulting room. Almost all of the characters interact directly with only one other, patient or analyst, in a succession of psychoanalytic hours. The backdrop is a Tennessee psychiatric institution in the 1960s. A new research director is being sought, which sets off a power struggle, revealing the participants’ inner anguish and complex motivations. Shevrin believes that, like ancient Greek theater, psychoanalytic work intensifies human drama and reveals the essences of human character and experience, the inner pulse, the rising and falling tides of psychoanalysis.