SOURCE: "Dating Your Dad," in The New Republic, March 31, 1997, pp. 32-6.

[In the following review, Wolcott gives an extensive analysis of Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss. In comparing it to her other works and to her statements in interviews, Wolcott questions whether The Kiss is fact or fiction.]

Remember when it took some digging to unearth secrets? When guilt and repression were still powerful enforcers? In the aftermath of Freud and Jung, the unconscious seemed like a rich treasure bed, a sunken Atlantis of racial myth and murky memories, a crumbling Edgar Allan Poe estate choked with moss. To read one of Freud's case studies is to descend a spiral staircase where steps are broken or missing, dreams contain puns, and puns yield clues to primal events, usually involving some sexual eye-popper. However mistaken Freud's treatment may have been of "Dora" and the "Wolf Man," his case studies survive...