Reviews of An Immigrant in the 1960s

Experiencing New York in the 60s, in Manhattan, through Peter’s eyes as he writes about it in an easy to read and incredibly personally revealing and humble autobiography, has been a reminiscent and an eye-opening experience.

Susan Hein, MPS, LP, NCPsyA, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, professor, historian, author.

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The story of how he overcame numerous obstacles to gain a Ph.D. and become a professor and an author is engrossing and inspirational.  It is also a good humored, well written coming of age story truly in the mold of fairy tales, Horatio Alger's success sagas, and Ben Franklin's autobiography.

Zohara Boyd, a former colleague, professor emerita of English, Appalachian State University. 

 

Reviews of A Perfect Portrait:

In her review of A Perfect Portrait in Clio's Psyche (23, 1, Fall 2016: 82) and NYC psychoanalyst and psychohistorian Merle Molofsky wrote:

"In his historical novel,  Petschauer uses his deeply attuned, intuitive, psychologically resonant storytelling gift to create for the reader memorable characters in a richly detailed menu, life in 18th century Weimar, Germany.  He evokes the specifics of home work, social status, social mores and relationships so that we very well may be walking the streets, frequenting the taverns, or working side-by-side people living in everyday lives. Most importantly, you feel the nuances of the  interval in lives and social expectations of women."

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Paul Elovitz, psychohistorian and editor of Clio's Psyche  emailed in a personal email on April 3rd, 2016:

"Congratulations Peter, I enjoyed your Perfect Portrait: A Novel Set in 18th-Century Weimar Germany which I finished the day before yesterday.  Your ending caught me unawares."

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Zohara Boyd, a former colleague at Appalachian State University, wrote in a personal email on June 19th, 2016:

"I  have read A Perfect Portrait and enjoyed it thoroughly, though I had hoped you might end it differently.  Of course, when I was a kid, I read Tale of Two Cities several times in hopes that ending might somehow change too.  The revisions are very good.  The dates put everything in its proper time frame and make the flashbacks much clearer.  And Johann seems less of a lout, still nowhere near the perfect husband but much more tolerable, snoring and all. I do love the clarity of the language and the real sound of the dialogue.  It was a great read at the seashore last month. "

 

Reviews of Wounded Centuries: A Selection of Poems

Ken Fuchsman, “Wounded Centuries,” Psychohistory News; Newsletter of the International Psychohistorical Association, 35, 3 (Summer, 2016): 4.

“One of Peter (Petschauer's) poems in Wounded Centuries is about a Hungarian Jew with his own family’s last name and who had the same occupation as his father, a journalist. He found out about this man searching on the Internet. This Hungarian, Attila Petschauer, who was also a fencer in the 1928 and 1932 Olympics, was “tortured to death by his former comrades in a concentration camp.”

For Peter, the only way to deal with

his anguish was through poetry:

"Attila, how dare you disturb

my peace with your heritage?

A heritage that questions my own?"

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Review of In the Face of Evil:

Professor David Beisel's review of In the Face of Evil in Clio's Psyche, Vol. 21, Number 4 (March 2015): 473-76.  Clio's Psyche is a refereed journal.

Beisel writes that, "Anyone who knows Professor Petschauer's scholarship is aware how scrupulous he is with regard to the historical and cultural context of words.  This study is no exception. The narrative regularly pauses for the insertion of unique words, provides a phrase or two on what they mean in historical and ethnographic context, and shows how many untranslatable meanings mold individual and group perceptions. It provides elaborate psycholinguistics of historical meaning, another strength of the book."