Thank you to my editor, Olivia Taylor Smith, whose insightful edits transformed this book. You knew just what to whittle and just where to push. Our brainstorming phone calls were clarifying, yes, but also fun, and I always left eager to dive back into writing. And thank you to Jaya Nicely for designing Hysteria’s remarkable cover and to Xiao Wang for his painting, which mesmerizes me.

Thank you to the many teachers who helped shape me into a novelist: To Gabe Hudson at Princeton, who reminded me how to play on the page. To my professors in NYU’s Cultural Reporting and Criticism program: Katie Roiphe introduced me to some of the writings I hold most dear, including William Styron’s Darkness Visible, and expanded my notion of what was possible on the page. And Susie Linfield taught me how to write—that is, how to think—with relentless clarity, and has now mentored me for close to a decade. To Beth Ann Bauman at the West Side YMCA Writer’s Voice, who helped me find my way back to fiction. To my professors in The New School’s MFA program, especially Helen Schulman, who interrogated my writing while also nurturing me; Darcey Steinke, who encouraged me to lean into my weirder impulses; Luis Jaramillo, whose novel-writing course was a revelation; and my adviser Katie Kitamura, whose incisive feedback transformed this book.

Thank you to my analyst, my greatest teacher.

Thank you to all those who read versions of this manuscript: To my classmates at The New School, especially Stephan Lee and my remarkable thesis group, Wynne Kontos, Nicole Cammorata, and Mike Pezley. Thanks also to Willow Belden, Alex Eggerking, and Conway Irwin for reading and brainstorming, and for buoying me.

Thank you to Josh Lambert, who led the excellent Tent: Creative Writing fellowship at the Yiddish Book Center, and to Sam Lipsyte and my cohort of fiction fellows, who offered feedback on an early version of the first chapter of this novel.

Thank you to Ruby Namdar, Ronit Muszkatblit, Elissa Strauss, and my fellows at LABA at the Fourteenth Street Y, where, far below the surface of my consciousness, this book began to germinate.

Thank you to Stephen Grosz for his writings and for speaking with me about this book at an early stage.

Thank you to the New York Public Library and to Melanie Locay, who facilitated my residencies in the Wertheim Study and the Allen Room.

Thank you to the many coffee shops I wrote in, especially the Hungarian Pastry Shop and Irving Farm on the Upper West Side.

Thank you to Anthony Venneri and Michael Panayos at the Metropolitan Opera House.

I am indebted to Peter Gay’s and Joel Whitebook’s biographies of Sigmund Freud and to the writings of Freud himself.