On The Couch

Jackie O: On the Couch is the story of Jackie Kennedy Onassis as she might have written it. This is not just another biography. For the first time, Jackie O: On the Couch highlights Jackie's life from her own perspective, as imagined by author Dr. Alma Bond, a psychoanalyst and long-time student of Jackie lore. The facts are all historically correct, as are the ideas, the Washington intrigue and politics, and the examination of the role of women in society and in the White House. Jackie speaks of her need to record her story truthfully - to replace the hodgepodge of lies published during her lifetime. Speaking as an older woman, she ponders how her points of view have changed from those she held when she was young. The book delves into her childhood and explores how and why Jackie became the person she was. It also explores the Kennedys, and how John F. Kennedy's background affected his marriage. Jackie's deep love for Jack, his early inattentiveness, their difficulties together, his outrageous womanizing, happy times at the White House, and the tragedy of his assassination - all are viewed through Jackie's eyes. Jackie writes of her need for Aristotle Onassis, debunking the notion that she married him purely for his money, and traces the joyful early years of the marriage through to its dramatic collapse and Ari's difficult death. A different Jackie emerges into the world of publishing. Her new persona allows her to establish her very best relationship with the stout and adoring Maurice Tempelsman, until non-Hodgkins lymphoma takes her life in 1994, at age 64. Jackie O: On the Couch is a unique exploration of the life and loves of a great historical figure. Jackie Kennedy Onassis deeply prized her privacy and, as a result, she was both revered and mysterious. In this book, much of the mystery is shed as Jackie finally emerges as a fully fleshed-out, three-dimensional person-a true human being, with enormous strengths and shortcomings, who all of us can now understand and appreciate, perhaps for the first time.

With so much written, rumored, told, and retold about Marilyn Monroe, it's amazing to consider how much we still don't know. On the screen she was iconic, radiant, and yet her talent so rarely earned her respect. In life she was intelligent, brilliant, and yet regarded as little more than Hollywood's blonde bombshell. She was the wife of baseball stars and playwrights and the plaything of the president. She was full of life, even as drugs and depression drove her ever-closer to death. But who was the real Marilyn Monroe, beyond the hit films and the headlines? Take away Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Prince and the Showgirl, Some Like It Hot and The Misfits, and who was the Norma Jean underneath? Psychoanalyst and longtime biographer Dr. Alma Bond has explored the hidden lives of remarkable women like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Camille Claudel. Now she turns her analytical eye to the untold story of Marilyn Monroe, the woman everyone wanted to see and touch, but whom almost no one actually wanted to know. Dr. Bond imagines, in detail, a several-year stretch during the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Marilyn, an exceedingly fragile figure, submits to analysis on the couch of Manhattan psychoanalyst Dr. Darcy Dale. When Marilyn returns to Hollywood, their sessions turn to correspondence as the truth of Marilyn's final years is revealed. Brilliantly, entertainingly, and movingly, Marilyn Monroe: On the Couch shows just what lay beneath Marilyn's iconic beauty. Dr. Dale, a fictional stand-in for the author, sees Marilyn Monroe as few ever have, both inside and out, and transfers those insights to readers. It's impossible to imagine anyone providing a better, more complete, intimate, and unforgettable understanding of this truly remarkable, even pivotal figure in film and sexual history.

An ancient mystery solved. Scholars, professors, and historians have wondered for centuries how and why Lady Macbeth, the beautiful, beloved wife of a nobleman, had to encourage - nay, push - her husband, Prince Macbeth, to commit the ghastly crime of killing the king. The great Sigmund Freud himself said that nobody knows why the Lady did so. Dr. Alma Bond spent many years searching for the reason. Read Lady Macbeth: On the Couch to learn the answer to this ancient mystery, and to get a fascinating, first-hand look at life more than a millennium ago.

In the fourth installment of her "On the Couch" series, famed female biographer Dr. Alma Bond looks inside the head and life of presidential frontrunner and informs voters what she's found.