New Moon

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 is an autobiographical novel that tracks the “enchantments” through which one passes in a life. It begins with Richard Grossinger’s 1950s American childhood (board games, candy bars, cherished toys, baseball) and is followed by his New York school daze (grade school at P.S. 6, "group" in Central Park, Freudian psychoanalysis, Grossinger’s Hotel in the Catskills, Color War at Camp Chipinaw, and ’50s rock ’n’ roll).

Then comes the watershed of his early 1960s adolescence (prep school at Horace Mann, creative writing, teen dating, the mysteries of tarot and divination), culminating in mid-sixties initiation (college at Amherst, spiritual and political baptisms, nascent romance, the beginnings of confronting the shadow, and the onset of adult life).

By presenting coming of age as a series of enchantments that break and re-form over time, New Moon offers you a model for reviewing your own childhood, individuation, and spiritual quest as a single, continuous path.