Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep is a Hollywood icon, a political activist, a twenty-plus Oscar-nominated actress, and a mystery. The Devil Wears Prada, Kramer v. Kramer, Julie & Julia, Mama Mia!, Sophie's Choice―Meryl does it all. But who is she when the camera stops rolling? What are the thoughts that she keeps hidden?

Enter Dr. Darcy Dale. The most successful psychoanalyst in New York City, Dr. Dale has treated a number of the most famous and exceptional women in the world. Marilyn Monroe, Jackie O., and Barbra Streisand have all managed to find their way to the doorstep of this psychoanalyst''s office.

Fully aware of Dr. Dale's notability, Streep decides to pay her a call, but not for psychiatric treatment. The actress hopes to observe Dr. Dale as a means of preparing for her next role as a psychoanalyst. The two strike a deal: Streep will undergo analysis herself, just as psychoanalysts must do as part of their education.

In the newest installment of her On the Couch series, Dr. Alma H. Bond gives us a seat on the couch next to Meryl as the actress prepares for her next role, and Dr. Dale performs an analysis of one of Hollywood's most talented actresses. What follows is one of the most thorough and comprehensive biographies of Meryl Streep.

In this detailed guide to all that made Meryl, anything you have ever wondered is chronicled in Dr. Dale's session notes. In-depth research spanning Streep's ancestry, childhood, college years, romantic entanglements, and more all finds its way onto these pages. Anyone who has ever wanted to learn more about Meryl Streep as a person, or has an interest in her acting methods, will undoubtedly lap up this book's fascinating contents.

Meryl Streep: On the Couch offers what no other biography can: a psychoanalytic perspective into the life and mind of Meryl Streep. While the media gives us the most versatile and amazing actress of her generation, Dr. Bond gives us the mother, the wife, the woman.

Born in February 1923 and still going strong, Dr. Alma H. Bond is the author or co-author of more than two dozen published books, among them: Jackie O: On the Couch; Lady Macbeth: On the Couch; Marilyn Monroe: On the Couch; Hillary Clinton: On the Couch; Barbra Streisand: On the Couch; Michelle Obama: A Biography; The Autobiography of Maria Callas: A Novel; Margaret Mahler: A Biography of the Psychoanalyst; Camille Claude: A Novel; America’s First Woman Warrior: The Story of Deborah Sampson; and Who Killed Virginia Woolf? A Psychobiography.

Dr. Bond received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University, graduated from the post-doctoral program in psychoanalysis at the Freudian Society, and was a psychoanalyst in private practice for 37 years in New York City. Following an accident-induced coma from which she was not expected to recover, she “retired” to become a full-time writer.

Dr. Bond is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Dramatists Guild, and the Authors Guild, as well as a fellow and faculty member of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, the International Psychoanalytic Association, and the American Psychological Association. She was one of the first non-medical analysts to be elected to the International Psychoanalytic Association.

Dr. Bond grew up in Philadelphia, where she obtained her undergraduate degree in psychology from Temple University, and following voluntary military service, moved to New York, where she earned a graduate degree in psychology from Columbia University. A longtime resident of New York City, she lived for nearly a dozen years in south Florida, five years in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and now in Allentown, PA.