Trials and Tribulations of a "Professional Malcontent" is the second and final volume of author Bernard I. Murstein's memoirs. While his first volume, When Seltzer Was Two Cents a Glass, covered growing up in the Bronx from 1929-1955, this publication covers his life from 1955 to the present.
In this very candid work, Murstein reveals his escapades in different cultures as well as living out his fantasies by becoming a stock market expert and a restaurant reviewer, as well as sparring a champion boxer.
Murstein grew up with little vocabulary for expressing his feelings and emotions, which might explain his lifelong interest in psychology. Provided in this book are summaries of his seminal research on human attraction, marriage, friendship, and courtship that allowed him to become a world figure in the study of love and marital choice.
Also included are several shocking and career-changing instances of anti-Semitism that occurred against a backdrop of the social and political change occurring in the United States during these years.
For fans of Moliere's The Misanthrope, this educational, insightful, and sharp-witted account unapologetically explores the life of a frustrated idealist who dreamed big and lived a full-if malcontented-life in America.
About the Author: Bernard I. Murstein, PhD, is an internationally known psychologist and historian and has lectured throughout the United States and Europe.
He received a bachelor's degree in history from the City College of New York, a master's in clinical psychology from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, and a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.
He is the author of eleven books among 165 publications. He is the past president of the Society of Personality Assessment and held an endowed chair at Connecticut College. He was also designated as a twentieth-century distinguished psychologist by Spain's Papeles Psicologos del Colegio.
He currently resides at Lasell Village in Auburndale, Massachusetts, with his wife of sixty-one years.
