A coming-of-age memoir linking Freudian analysis, New York City, and esoteric practice across the fifties and sixties
• Traces a timeline of 1944–1965 to show the author’s growth from elementary school to college while concretely mapping his psychological development
• Explains how Freudian analysis, Jungian reading, dream interpretation, and tarot divination help decode fear, alienation, and trauma
• Situates family conflict, camp life, baseball, and the threat of nuclear war as laboratories for identity development, spirituality, and social awareness
New Moon follows Richard Grossinger from his earliest memories in New York City through adolescence and college, detailing how a midcentury Jewish childhood becomes the ground for psychological and spiritual inquiry.
The narrative moves through grade school at P.S. 6, high school at Horace Mann, Hebrew school, Color War at Camp Chipinaw, a second family at Grossinger’s Hotel and Country Club, and finally Amherst College. Each section documents specific environments and how their routines, conflicts, and loyalties form distinct stages in the coming-of-age process. Spanning from 1944 to 1965, Grossinger’s inner development unfolds against the backdrop of baseball, rock ’n’ roll, the advent of television, and the civil rights movement.
A core theme is long-term psychotherapy. As a child and teenager in Freudian analysis, Grossinger learned to work with panic, illness, and guilt as expressions of unconscious meaning. Detailed sessions show how free association, dream interpretation, and attention to bodily symptoms helped him recognize underlying fears and conflicts. Through later study of Jungian psychology and experiments with tarot divination, the author extends this framework into a broader psychospiritual practice that includes chakras, the Qabala, Gurdjieff, and Ouspensky.
By presenting coming of age as a series of “enchantments” that break and reform over time, New Moon offers you a model for reviewing your own childhood, psychotherapy, and spiritual search as a single, continuous path.
