By Elizabeth Clark-Stern
What a feast for the mind, to encounter Kenneth Kimmel’s timely book. I was in the airport a couple of years ago, and saw the cover of Newsweek. A quite innocent-looking baby pig stared out at the camera. The title: What Makes Men Act Like Pigs. I bought the issue, and kicked myself when the contents provided no substantive analysis. I was hungry for an exploration beyond a re-cap of the public behaviors of famous men. I also wanted a narrative that offered a larger vision of the historic human malady of the narcissistic male.
Eros and the Shattering Gaze is that book.
Kimmel takes us on a sumptuous journey, using the vibrant medium of myth, movies, clinical vignettes, and contemporary portraits of such luminaries as Carl Jung and Bill Clinton, both of whom struggled with their own narcissism. Down, down we go into the shattered self that begins at the doorstep of the wounded mother-son relationship.
