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Anatomy of a Secret Life
by Gail Saltz
List Price: 22.95


Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Broadway (April 11 2006)
Costumer Rating: Costumer rating

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: The Secret Life
We all have secrets; we live and breathe them every day. We may not know what one another's secrets are, but we know they're there. They're always there, invisible presences in everyone's lives, the subtext beneath the text, the almost uttered

Chapter 2: The Secret Life of the Mind
It was loneliness that drew her to the desktop computer at first, and later on it was excitement. Adrian always made sure to finish her homework first, and then she kissed her mother good night (her father was usually traveling) and went upstairs to her



Book Description

What do these people have in common?

  • The traveling businessman who brings prostitutes back to his hotel room

  • The wealthy woman who is arrested for shoplifting

  • The seemingly happily married man who cruises gay clubs

They are all — despite differences in degree, gender, and age — living a double life, one of our most deeply ingrained, but poorly understood psychological drives. Now, Dr. Gail Saltz steps into the breach to explore — in detail and based on the latest research — our impulse to create and nurture alter egos.

Saltz reveals how assuming a different identity can be healthy and tremendously liberating. For proof, we need look no further than the innumerable people who reinvent themselves by moving to the big city, or the countless pseudonymous bloggers. But, as she also makes clear, leading a secret life comes with potentially serious psychological risks. She shows that, in more extreme cases, leading a secret life can have devastating emotional, social and familial consequences — both for the person leading the secret life, and for those close to him or her.

The definitive popular work on how a secret life is formed, lived, justified, and exposed, Saltz's Anatomy includes contemporary case studies and historical examples (Lindbergh, T. E. Lawrence, Tchaikovsky, et cetera) of people who have risked it all for a taste of forbidden fruit.

About the Author

Gail Saltz, M.D.Gail Saltz, M.D.

Gail Saltz, M.D., a psychoanalyst and clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Weill-Cornell School of Medicine, is a weekly contributor to the Today show. She is a frequent guest on Oprah and has written for Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Parade, and more. Dr. Saltz lives and works in New York City..

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