Shrinkwrapped

Perhaps the world's longest coming-of-age story, SHRINKWRAPPED shows how one man's search for a better life worked-at last. In a blue-collar Michigan town where corporal punishment was seen as positive parenting, troubled families rarely sought professional help. But Michael Grossman's teachers sent him to see a Freudian psychoanalyst at age 7. It was the first of a parade of therapies that would include Rogerian bear-hugs, Gestalt dream analysis, Rolfing, Bioenergetics and even LSD. Sitting beside Michael on a succession of "shrinks'" couches, the reader follows his progress through one defense after another until he finally achieves a joyful capacity to care for others. Untangling the complex, sometimes eccentric and other times abusive family relationships that enmeshed his Midwestern boyhood in the mid-20th century, the author finally faces fundamental truths that lead to a profound transformation. By turns funny, poignant and shocking, Shrinkwrapped is a story of hope, of growing insight and ultimately of love reborn.