Milton Sapirstein on the Paradoxes of Everyday Life

Abstract

The focus in Sapirstein’s book is on a psychoanalytic approach to paradoxical aspects of everyday life—topics such as decorating a home, reading a marriage manual, and screaming mothers that would seem unimportant and trivial but, in truth, are very problematic. The writings of a scholar of religion, Mircea Eliade, are referenced in terms of the difference between the sacred and the profane and the importance of a house in religious thought. Sapirstein explains that women equate a house to their bodies and thus decorating a house calls forth hidden resentments women have about their mothers and all manner of suppressed anxieties and fears.