Wool-Gathering or How I Ended Analysis

Re-issued as part of the Routledge Mental Health Classic Editions series with a new introduction by Patricia Gherovici, Wool-Gathering or How I Ended Analysis is a funny and personal account of the final month of a six-year psychoanalysis.

Taking place in a frenetic and strikebound 1990s Paris, Dan Gunn chronicles his relationship with his austere and near-silent Lacanian analyst, ‘the Sergeant’, while navigating collapsing ceilings, transport chaos, and the messy entanglements of love and language. Through a blend of dry wit and unflinching honesty, Gunn explores what it means to end a process that has no clear ending, to speak in a voice that feels authentically one's own, and to gather the scattered fragments of a self into something resembling wholeness. Part diary, part meditation on memory, foreignness, and the elusive nature of change, Wool-Gathering captures the peculiar intimacy of the analytic encounter: its silences and revelations, its frustrations and unexpected freedoms. Gunn opens up a world normally kept behind closed doors with rare candour and literary grace.

Wool-Gathering or How I Ended Analysis is not only a highly entertaining memoir but an essential meditation on how we construct our stories, find our voices, and dare to leave behind what no longer serves us.