512
EOITH KURZWEll
of forgiveness, of
losing
time.
For in the unconscious, in our dreams, as
Elizabeth Kamen surely learned with Dr. Greene, there is no time, there
is only the articulation of meaning, the representation of what signifies:
The dream still seemed to hover in the corners of the room.
"Can
you swim, Elizabeth?" her mother was asking her. "Yes, mother,"
she said, "you hold me, and I'll kick." Her mother, who was ter–
rified of the water, held her, and she kicked. Waves of time broke
against the white walls like surf. She leaned over and woke up
Adam. "We better get going," she said, while somewhere behind
her eyes, the woman and child were falling and falling, like a
feather, or stone.
That is the end of the book, and it is an emblem - without time, break–
ing time's hold - of a freedom won. The falling is a falling away of
the old bondage, but it is a falling off as well, it is a loss, a lessening,
and what Elizabeth learns in the book is that she herself will be reduced
by every victory she scores over her mother. For we give ourselves up
when we give up our parents by becoming them, and that
is
why the
falling is so ambiguous, feather or stone. Susan Schaeffer makes her
choice all right, the novel is her way of choosing, in its process, but she
knows what has been let go, and that kind of relenting, that forgiveness
is the memorable thing about
Falling,
the modest victory which deserves
more than a modest salute - it deserves the experience it affords, re–
membering that the word
experience
and the word
peril
sprout into con–
sciousness from the same root.
Ri(hard Howard
THE ENCOUNTER CULTURE
ENCOUNTER GROUPS: FIRST FACTS. By Lieberman, Yalom, and Miles.
Basic Books.
$15.00.
By now everyone knows, as Lieberman, Yalom, and Miles
inform us, that "encounter groups are an antidote to alienation, a mod–
ern revival without the deity, fun and games for adults who cannot play
without a token offering to the Protestant ethic, an inexpensive form of
psychotherapy for the masses, a Communist plot to undermine Amer–
ican morals, a way out of the havoc of the industrial revolution." Only
a blend of ideology and instant therapy could possibly be thought of as
