Bethelard, Faith 1953(?)-

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BETHELARD, Faith 1953(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1953; children: three. Education: Bryn Mawr College, graduated (art history; magna cum laude), 1993; Widener University Institute for Graduate Clinical Psychology, M.S. and Ph.D., 1999.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

CAREER:

Licensed clinical psychologist in private practice. Has also worked in hospital outpatient clinics, at a community mental health center, at a college counseling center, and in a group private practice. Business consultant and executive coach; presenter of workshops for clinicians.

WRITINGS:

(With Elisabeth Young-Bruehl) Cherishment: A Psychology of the Heart, Free Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Also author of professional articles published in psychoanalytic journals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Faith Bethelard came to psychology and psychoanalysis late; married at twenty, she was a mother at age twenty-two, and finally entered Bryn Mawr College in 1989 at age thirty-six. A decade later she had earned her doctorate and had become a practicing psychotherapist. Bethelard's dissertation was written on the Japanese psychoanalyst Takeo Doi's theory of "Amae psychology," which takes as its core the belief that infants have an expectation to be loved fully and indulgently, a desire for "cherishment," as "Amae" is sometimes translated.

Working with fellow psychoanalyst and author Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Bethelard in 2000 turned parts of her dissertation into a much fuller study of this fundamental need for unconditional love. Cherishment: A Psychology of the Heart is a blend of Eastern philosophy and Western psychoanalysis, with references to the Chinese book of divination I Ching, excerpts from sessions with patients, snippets of Homeric poetry, dream interpretation, and intensely personal observation. Booklist contributor Vanessa Bush found this title an "accessible book that is as much spiritual as it is psychoanalytical." E. James Lieberman, reviewing the book in Library Journal, also had praise, noting that the text is "rich with ideas and cross-cultural sophistication." A contributor for Publishers Weekly, while commending the authors' "personal style and therapeutic tales" and their ability to make their "intriguing exploration accessible to general readers," also felt that they "fall short of demonstrating that cherishment truly fills a gap in psychoanalytic language." Jennifer Couzin, writing in the Washington Post Book World, found problems in the authors' style: "Inventive ideas are often overshadowed by an awkward, overly personal narrative.… A style that is engrossing in the preface is simply tiring by the time the final chapter rolls around." However, Stephen Wilson, writing in the New York Times, was more impressed by the authors' achievement, observing that Cherishment "has all the ingredients of a monograph—hypothesis, case studies, dreams and conceptual analysis—but it reads more like a love story." For Wilson, the book, like a well-loved baby, "seems to smile up at the reader, inviting admiration—and it is bonny!"