• .

  • 

  • I love Roth, but this is not one of my favorites. Pretty tedious, really, with only a few genuinely interesting moments. I guess I see why this was a big deal in the early seventies, but it doesn't really hold up well.

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― Albion said on May 29, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933-)] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spievogel says: "Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration." (Spielvogel, O. "The Puzzled Penis," Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse, Vol. XXIV p. 909.) It is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship.

• Jewishhumorfictionself-absorbed