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On Group Therapy

 I've just started "Group," a buzzy memoir about group therapy. Reese Witherspoon selected this as a Book of the Moment, and you can easily see why; in its toughness and its humor, "Group" resembles a major Witherspoon project, the movie "Wild."


In "Group," our heroine, Christie Tate, discovers that she is first in her law-school class; almost immediately afterward, she catches herself wishing to die. She wishes someone would pull up and put a bullet in her brain.


This is a compelling opening, and it's surely something most of us can relate to: a gap between an apparently sunny reality and a sordid "inner reality." (Whose Facebook page actually gives an accurate picture of daily life? Who among us has that Facebook page? Anyone? .....Anyone?)


Tate speaks with a friend, who recommends a shrink, who recommends group therapy. And that's the setup for the book. Within a few weeks, Tate is speaking frankly about her struggles with food (after a lengthy fight against bulimia, Tate has begun an unusual regimen of eating six or seven apples every night). Tate is also recalling when, in her early teens, she witnessed a friend die in a freak accident. And we get the horrifying (and completely relatable) account of Tate's childhood difficulty with pinworm. Tate's parents didn't do their research, and they gave Tate Desitin--which can't treat pinworm. Tate would wake up in the morning with Desitin smeared all over her body--and she would feel deep shame and confusion.


Do you know the Nora Ephron philosophy of art and life? If you step on a banana peel, you're sort of a fool. If you then tell a story about having stepped on that banana peel--you gain control of the narrative. You become--oddly--"winning." Tate has learned that lesson well. She is a charmer.


I'm happy to have this book.

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