THE SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE MACHINE
by IRIS MURDOCH
374 pages. Viking. $8.95.
Early in this glittering examination of love's disguises in the London suburbs, Novelist Iris Murdoch introduces Blaise Gavender, a successful psychotherapist whose practice is among the well-to-do. Murdoch's tone is aldous, which is to say it seems to promise an ever-so-dry, Huxleian sort of farce: "He received an early lesson from a patient who always wore gloves because she said she had the stigmata. It was a little while before it occurred to Blaise to ask her to remove the gloves. She had the stigmata, and was later successfully...
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