...a fundamental rule of journalism, which is to tell a story and stick to it. The narratives of journalism (significantly called "stories"), like those of mythology and folklore, derive their power from their firm, undeviating sympathies and antipathies. Cinderella must remain good and the stepsisters bad. "Second stepsister not so bad after all" is not a good story.

This to her was a professional sin. She has resided in the United States since her family emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1939. As reported in The New York Times the author "declared in an affidavit under penalty of perjury that the notes were genuine.

She is the author of Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (1981) In the Freud Archives (1984) and The Journalist and the Murderer (1990). Janet Malcolm (born 1934) is an American writer and journalist on staff at The New Yorker magazine. " The influential critic Harold Bloom has praised her "wonderful exuberance" writing that Malcolm's books "transcend what they appear to be: superb reportage.