Awaken the Neurotic Within

It is hard to think of two genres that have less in common than contemporary theory and self-help. While The Call of Character: Living a Life Worth Living is certainly not a typical self-help book, and Mari Ruti is explicitly critical of the genre, she also positions her work as a psycho­analytic alternative to those cheery, list-filled manuals that purport to teach us how to live.

A professor of contemporary theory at the University of Toronto, and the author of academic work on the notoriously hard-to-read French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Ruti has lately been engaged in an interesting battle with self-help books, wresting some of life’s big questions from the sweaty grip of simplistic and saccharine gurus. In The Case for Falling in Love: Why We Can’t Master the Madness of Love—and Why That’s the Best Part, published in 2011, she put the boots to the tired...