BOOKS
475
prise, but have been the reason for a number of institutional
splits. Could it be that
Be~telheim
chose to publish in
The New
Yorker
precisely because his audience there would hail as "new"
what to psychoanalysts and other intellectuals is old-hat?
This is not to denigrate what Bettelheim has done, although
this well-intentioned little book could have been so much more,
given Bettelheim's knowledge and stature. As it is, it ends up
being little more than another addition to current Freudiana-to
the exposes of psychoanalysts from
C.
C.
Jung's relation to Sabina
Spielrein to Janet Malcolm's
Psychoanalysis: The Impossible
Profession,
from Mary Balmary's
Psychoanalyzing Psychoanaly–
sis
to
the rewriting of history by a number of Lacanians. For
both Freud and man's soul deserve a fuller and more serious
treatment.
EDITH KURZWEIL
TIMERMAN'S HALL
OF
MIRRORS
THE LONGEST WAR: ISRAEL IN LEBANON. By Jacobo Tlmerman.
Translated from the Spanish
by
Miguel Acoca. Alfred
A.
Knopf. $11 .95.
No previous war in the Middle East has raised so many
questions concerning the reliability, intellectual honesty, and
profess ionalism of the mass media as Israel's invasion of Lebanon.
The grossly inflated casualty figures, the wi ld exaggeration of
the extent of destruction against the background of an ongoing
seven-year civil war, the sensation -mongering, the scandalous
disregard for truth and historical perspective, the invention of
imaginary war crimes, and the absurd charges of "genocide"
against Israel are now a matter of record. The liberties taken by
Western journalists with facts , logic, and professional norms of
objectivity during this war are not, however, an incidental by-
Author's Note: This rev iew was written before the results of the current com–
mission were known . The boldly independent findings of tha t body, and their
implementation by the government, underline just how little Mr. Timerman
has really understood about the workings of Israeli democracy.
