Testimonials for Dr. Schoenewolf's Works
From a Review of his feature film, THERAPY:
"Although the wind-chill was in single digits, the public screening of Dr. Gerald Schoenewolf’s film, “Therapy,” at Anthology Film Archives (NewFilmmakers Series) was hot stuff indeed. Featuring but a few actors, “Therapy” portrays a budding therapist (male), his female patient, her father and psychiatric supervisors. Doc and patient become romantically involved after she reports having been sexually abused. There are many interesting twists and turns and the film is shot in local environs, including many wonderful scenes in Stuyvesant Square Park. Schoenewolf, author of T&V’s “Mind Sight” column, wrote, directed and produced the 101 min. film—even penning the musical score. The acting is superb and documentary-like yet the style of the film is often ethereal and artsy. Various surprises caused the screening audience to break out in hilarious laughter and the poignant, startling ending certainly leaves its mark. The patient’s multiple personalities provide the framework for give-and-take role playing, highlighting the concept of personality and what it is to be human." --Sidney G. Schneck, Town&Village
From a Review of his book, 101 COMMON THERAPEUTIC BLUNDERS:
“Dr. Schoenewolf has written a cutting-edge revision of 101 Common Therapeutic Blunders. This new edition brings the volume up to date and adds many new cases, a new section on supervisory blunders, and the effects of insurance company encroachment on the treatment process. There is also a poetic ode to the psychoanalytic profession entitled, ‘A Therapist’s Manifesto.’ This book is a must read for therapists of all persuasions. It is a guide to understanding how countertransferences and counterresistances lead to most of the mistakes we make, and it also shows how to resolve them.” --Robert Pepper, Ph.D., psychotherapist and author
From a Review of his book, LIZZIE: A Biographical Novel
I have read other books about Lizzie Borden, but I never really got to know her like I did in this biographical novel. The author, who is a psychoanalyist/writer, has written a Dostoyevski-like novel that captures the sulky, narcissistic personality of Lizzie Borden and makes her personality come to life as never before. It starts in her childhood, when her mother dies just after Lizzie has turned five. It portrays her father as a suspicious and paranoid man who first spoils and then molests his young daughter, and shows how her resentment builds toward her father and her greedy stepmother. It describes the days before the axe murders, the day of the axe murders, and the trial. It ends with a section on her affair with Nance O'Neil, showing a theater-struck young woman with creative aspirations of her own. The author gets into her Lizzie's mind with a streams of thoughts that reveal what she was thinking and feeling throughout the murder, trial and even at the end when she dies alone in the town she had grown up in. This was a page-turner with a dialogue that was sparkling and a story that kept me totally absorbed. This tragic portrait of a woman in distress is the most authentic version of Lizzie I've ever read. --Edith Codrington in Goodreads
From a Review of his book, THE COUPLE WHO FELL IN HATE:
“In his inventive, audacious, and uniquely creative style, Schoenewolf takes the genre of the literary case history and uses it as a springboard to present an overview of eclectic approaches to psychotherapy. Borrowing from a large asenal of important psychoanalytic and nonanalytic therapists in widely divergent schools, Schoenewolf builds his thesis that therapy must be tailored to the patient at every step of the way, and provides an array of illustrative interventions woven throughout the text. Through gripping ‘Teaching Tales,’ varied as the wrenching ‘Buttons,’ the wistful ‘Ariel in the Bluebonnets,’ and the whimsical ‘Beginnings and Endings,’ Schoenewolf leads us through a multicolored labyrinth of clinical dialogues that are replete with interactive skills and depict the rich phenomenology of a therapist’s inner experience. A daring, jarring, descriptive, and informative tour de force…” --Anna Aragno, author of Symbolization: Proposing a Developmental Paradigm for a New Psychoanalytic Theory of Mind
