The Topeka School

by Ben Lerner

She seemed genuinely happy for me, and at first she was my staunchest defender against the inevitable charge that I’d compromised theoretical rigor for the sake of popular success. Certainly Sima understood better than anyone why I was committed to accessible writing; first and foremost, I believed that I could help a lot of people by describing triangles or sibling dynamics as clearly as possible and that the translation of those concepts into practical advice was my strength as a therapist. I also had, as Sima knew, a deep—a bone-deep—allergy to anything that smacked of mystification, to the way professional jargon—especially, but not only, of the analytical sort—could be deployed to dismiss women as hysterics; this was related to what had happened with my father, all the secrecy and gaslighting abuse involves. Now, the hard-core academics and theoreticians found it easy to dismiss me; if your book is celebrated in The New York Times, then you’re just peddling commercially repackaged ideology; you’re not to be taken seriously. There are of course real arguments to be had regarding what’s gained or lost with one mode of discourse or another, anti-intellectualism can be as bad as snobbery, but it was notable how, if one of the Foundation’s old boys or his allies showed up in the Times, it was because his work was transcendent, but when a penis-envying virago like me received attention, it was because I’d reduced everything to a kind of psychological chick lit.