Go Inside the Mind of Jackie Kennedy Onassis in Alma H. Bond's JACKIE O: ON THE COUCH

Related: fiction, biography, Bancroft Press

Jackie O: On The Couch, Inside the mind and life of Jackie Kennedy Onassis (Bancroft Press) is a fascinating, fictionalized biography by psychoanalyst and longtime student of Jackie lore, Dr. Alma H. Bond. An expert combination of meticulous research and scholarly understanding of the human mind, this read allows a secret look at Jackie - like listening and watching her privately reveal her innermost thoughts and feelings to her therapist - and gives us a glimpse into a woman whose life and very presence captivated the world.

Jackie O, the first in Dr. Bond's On the Couch series, not only gives us insight into the enigma that was Jackie but also explores John F. Kennedy's background and the ways it affected his marriage. Jackie's deep love for Jack, the cat and mouse game he played before their engagement, his early inattentiveness, and the difficult years they spent together, along with details of his outrageous womanizing and their happier times at the White House late in the marriage are viewed through her eyes. A poignant description of Jack's assassination and funeral is also recounted. The book is packed with historically correct facts that accurately portray Jackie's uniqueness as well as the politics and intrigue of Washington.

Bond looks into the widow Jackie's need for Aristotle Onassis; debunking the idea that she married Ari purely for his money, and, says Bond, "discloses previously unknown graphic details of Jackie's sexual awakening." The joyful early years are captured and the gradual collapse of the marriage and Ari's death. Jackie's successful entry into the publishing world and how the work helped to define her follows. A new Jackie emerges, who probably is closer to the one she would have become had she not been the First Lady.

Jackie's new persona allows her to form the best relationship of her life with the elderly, stout, and adoring Maurice Tempelsman - who gave Jackie the love, devotion and constancy that she never received from either husband. The book follows the progress of the non-Hodgkins lymphoma disease that led to Jackie's death at age 64, and thoughtfully portrays the gamut of emotions from her fierce denial to the gradual acceptance that she would not survive.

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