Editing Janet Malcolm (section)

===''Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession''===
{{main| Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession}}
In 1981, Malcolm published a book on the modern [[psychoanalysis|psychoanalytic]] profession, following a psychoanalyst she gave the pseudonym “Aaron Green”. [[Freud]] scholar [[Peter Gay]] wrote that Malcolm's "witty and wicked ''Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession'' has been praised by psychoanalysts (with justice) as a dependable introduction to analytic theory and technique. It has the rare advantage over more solemn texts of being funny as well as informative".<ref>[[Peter Gay]], ''Freud: A Life for Our Times'' (London, 1988) p. 763.</ref>

In his 1981 ''New York Times'' review, Joseph Edelson wrote that ''Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession'' "is an artful book", praising Malcolm’s "keen eye for the surfaces — clothing, speech and furniture — that express character and social role" (noting she was then the photography critic for ''The New Yorker''). It succeeds because she has instructed herself so carefully in the technical literature. Above all, it succeeds because she has been able to engage Aaron Green in a simulacrum of the psychoanalytic encounter — he confessing to her, she (I suspect) to him, the two of them joined in an intricate minuet of revelation."<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/27/books/not-much-has-changed-since-freud.html|title=Not Much Has Changed Since Freud|last=Adelson|first=Joseph|date=September 27, 1981|work=The New York Times|access-date=April 30, 2019|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

The book was a 1982 [[National Book Award for Nonfiction]] finalist.<ref name="national-book/malcolm">{{Cite web|title=Janet Malcolm|url=https://www.nationalbook.org/people/janet-malcolm/|access-date=June 17, 2021|website=National Book Foundation|language=en-US}}</ref>