New Books in Psychoanalysis

Latest Episodes:

Anneli Jefferson, "Are Mental Disorders Brain Disorders?" (Routledge, 2024) Nov 04, 2024

The question of whether mental disorders are disorders of the brain has led to a long-running and controversial dispute within psychiatry, psychology and philosophy of mind and psychology. While recent work in neuroscience frequently tries to identify underlying brain dysfunction in mental disorders, detractors argue that labelling mental disorders as brain disorders is reductive and can result in harmful social effects.

Are Mental Disorders Brain Disorders? (Routledge, 2024) brings a much-needed philosophical perspective to bear on this important question. Anneli Jefferson argues that while there is widespread agreement on paradigmatic cases of brain disorder such as brain cancer, Parkinson's or Alzheimer’s dementia, there is far less clarity on what the general, defining characteristics of brain disorders are. She identifies influential notions of brain disorder and shows why these are problematic. On her own, alternative, account, what counts as dysfunctional at the level of the brain frequently depends on what counts as dysfunctional at the psychological level. On this notion of brain disorder, she argues, many of the consequences people often associate with the brain disorder label do not follow. She also explores the important practical question of how to deal with the fact that many people do draw unlicensed inferences about treatment, personal responsibility or etiology from the information that a condition is a brain disorder or involves brain dysfunction.

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Stijn Vanheule, "Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy: A Road Map to Hope and Recovery for Families and Caregivers" (Other Press, 2024) Oct 29, 2024

Today I talked with Stijn Vanheule about Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy: A Road Map to Hope and Recovery for Families and Caregivers(Other Press, 2024).

Are we all a little crazy? Roughly 15 percent of the population will have a psychotic experience, in which they lose contact with reality. Yet we often struggle to understand and talk about psychosis.

Drawing on his work in Lacanian psychoanalysis, Stijn Vanheule seeks to answer this question, which carries significant implications for mental health as a whole. With a combination of theory from Freud to Lacan, present-day research, and compelling examples from his own patients and well-known figures such as director David Lynch and artist Yayoi Kusama, he explores psychosis in an engaging way that can benefit those suffering from it as well as the people who care for and interact with them.

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Derek Hook, “Six Moments in Lacan: Communication and Identification in Psychology and Psychoanalysis” (Routledge, 2018) Oct 25, 2024

How can Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” shed light on Lacan’s maxim, “The unconscious is structured like a language?” In Six Moments in Lacan: Communication and Identification in Psychology and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2018), professor Derek Hook thoroughly investigates and explains a number of Lacan’s major concepts from his structuralist period, making them accessible to a wide-ranging audience with reference to entertaining examples from popular culture. Hook argues that, while the fields of psychology and psychoanalysis share certain questions and premises, we must, as Lacan insisted, remain alert to the radical disjunction between the objectifying aims of psychology and psychoanalysis’s unique attention to the subject, conceived as an event in language. In this interview, we hear Derek explain several of his book’s key arguments, explore the clinical dimensions of Lacanian theory, and, alongside Derek’s illuminating commentary, listen to Richard Nixon confess his responsibility for Watergate.

Jordan Osserman grew up in South Florida and currently calls London home. He received his PhD in gender studies and psychoanalysis from University College London, his MA in psychosocial studies from Birkbeck College, and his BA in womens and gender studies from Dartmouth College. His published work can be found here.

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Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms in James Baldwin’s "Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone" Oct 16, 2024

This podcast describes a short history of a man who did something we’ve lost in America. That man was James Baldwin who insisted on telling the truth. He confronted the harsh realities of racism, believing that exposing its ugliness was necessary for progress. He rejected simplistic solutions, arguing that racism was deeply rooted in American consciousness and imagination, beyond just political and economic inequalities. Instead, Baldwin called for a fundamental transformation of American society and identity. He critiqued white America, urging white Americans to confront their own behavior and complicity in racist systems.

Controversially, Baldwin advocated for Black Americans to approach white countrymen with love, while still insisting on unconditional freedom, seeing this as necessary for true transformation. He ultimately wanted to build a nation that moved beyond racial categorization, focusing instead on individual humanity. Baldwin viewed racism as stemming from a deeper spiritual problem in America, where individuals and the nation lacked a true sense of identity. While he did not offer simple solutions to racism, Baldwin's penetrating analysis and powerful writing exposed the complexities of racism in our country, challenged both white and Black Americans to confront difficult truths, and provided a framework for understanding racism beyond just political reforms. His work continues to influence discussions on race in America today, aiming not to ameliorate racism in a superficial sense, but to push for a profound reckoning with and transformation of American society and identity in relation to race.

Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone is a powerful novel that explores the complexities of race, sexuality, and identity in America through the life of its protagonist, Leo Proud/hammer. As the story begins, Leo, a successful African-American actor, suffers from a heart attack. As he recovers he reflects on his life and relationships.

It is also of interest to note how James Baldwin’s novel relates to Dr. Matin Luther King Jr.’s non-fiction book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

Both books are discussed in terms of the major contributions they made to racism in America as well as how they illustrate psychoanalytic mechanism of defense.

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Sandra Buechler, "Psychoanalytic Approaches to Problems in Living" (Routledge, 2019) Oct 06, 2024

Sandra Buechler joins hosts Christopher Bandini and Tracy Morgan to discuss her latest book, Psychoanalytic Approaches to Problems in Living: Addressing Life's Challenges in Clinical Practice (Routledge, 2019), which continues her long standing exploration of the role of values in the work of psychoanalysis. The book discusses the many common difficulties that drive patients into treatment, such as loss, a hunger for meaningful work, the wish for revenge, aging, queries over forgiveness, struggles with guilt and shame. Buechler shows us how the analyst’s values inevitably shape their approach to these common topics, tilting treatments in myriad directions. As is her wont, she engages with poetry to deepen her explanations. She tells us that each of her books is generated by questions left unanswered in the previous one. And in each book, including this one, we see her in conversation with her forebears, particularly Sullivan, Fromm and Fromm-Reichman—what she calls her internal chorus.

What makes this interview especially rich is the discussion between Bandini, her former supervisee of 14 years and herself. She is a member of his internal chorus. Their tone with each other has a familiarity and warmth. But they have both had to face the loss of that particular way of relating, supervisor to supervisee. Buechler most recently retired from clinical work, making her a maverick in a profession where “dying in one’s chair” is not exactly a joke.

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Neil Vickers and Derek Bolton, "Being Ill: On Sickness, Care and Abandonment" (Reaktion Books, 2024) Oct 05, 2024

A serious illness often changes the way others see us. Few, if any, relationships remain the same. The sick become more dependent on partners and family members, while more distant contacts become strained. The carers of the ill are also often isolated. This book focuses on our sense of self when ill and how infirmity plays out in our relationships with others.

In Being Ill: On Sickness, Care and Abandonment (Reaktion, 2024) Dr. Neil Vickers and Dr. Derek Bolton offer an original perspective, drawing on neuroscience, psychology and psychoanalysis, as well as memoirs of the ill or their carers, to reveal how a sense of connectedness and group belonging can not only improve care, but make societies more resilient to illness. This is an essential book on the experience of major illness.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Naomi Seidman, "In the Freud Closet: Psychoanalysis and Jewish Languages" (Stanford UP, 2024) Oct 02, 2024

There is an academic cottage industry on the "Jewish Freud," aiming to detect Jewish influences on Freud, his own feelings about being Jewish, and suppressed traces of Jewishness in his thought.

In Translating the Jewish Freud: Psychoanalysis in Hebrew and Yiddish (Stanford University Press, 2024), Naomi Seidman takes a different approach, turning her gaze not on Freud but rather on those who seek out his concealed Jewishness. What is it that propels the scholarly aim to show Freud in a Jewish light? Naomi Seidman explores attempts to "touch" Freud (and other famous Jews) through Jewish languages, seeking out his Hebrew name or evidence that he knew some Yiddish. Tracing a history of this drive to bring Freud into Jewish range, Seidman also charts Freud's responses to (and jokes about) this desire. More specifically, she reads the reception and translation of Freud in Hebrew and Yiddish as instances of the desire to touch, feel, "rescue," and connect with the famous Professor from Vienna.

Interviewee: Naomi Seidman is the Chancellor Jackman Professor of the Arts at the University of Toronto, a National Jewish Book Award winner, and a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow.

Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com.

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Classic: Michael J. Diamond, "Masculinity and Its Discontents: The Male Psyche and the Inherent Tensions of Maturing Manhood" (Routledge, 2021) Sep 24, 2024

In his new book Masculinity and its Discontents: The Male Psyche and the Inherent Tensions of Maturing Manhood (Routledge, 2021), Michael J. Diamond develops an original psychoanalytic theory of male development through the prephallic, phallic and genital positions. He critically acknowledges and complicates oedipal and disidentification theories as the predominant paradigms in psychoanalytic theorizing about masculinity and helps us to shift our focus to primordial male vulnerability and its vicissitudes. This book is part of the emergent third wave of psychoanalytic theorizing about male development and takes conflict, fluidity and complex gendered identifications as hallmarks of the livelong struggle for a secure enough sense of masculinity. The book's specific strength lies in its rich clinical illustrations that show the analyst working with his own and his patients´ ever-evolving feelings about manhood. In the interview, Diamond presents his ideas, and we take a deep dive in the psychodynamics of the male psyche, looking at questions of contemporary masculinity, fatherhood and clinical technique.

Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de.

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Corinne Masur, "How Children Grieve: What Adults Miss, and What They Can Do to Help" (Alcove Press, 2024) Sep 16, 2024

An award-winning childhood grief expert shares clinically-informed advice for supporting kids and teens through difficult times--from family deaths and lost pets to unexpected moves, and beyond.

A necessary and impactful guide to understanding children's grief from the inside and to guiding children through loss, from the death of a parent and other family members, to the loss of friends, pets, and even the family home. Dr. Masur, an award-winning clinical psychologist specializing in grief and mourning, describes how to understand, help, and guide children at each age and stage of development and uses her own childhood experience with loss through empathetic yet clinically informed advice.

When Dr. Masur was fourteen years old, her father died. Like most children and teens facing loss, Masur didn't know how to handle her grief, and she was never encouraged to acknowledge or share what she was feeling with her family, teachers, or friends. Her experience of shock and emotional paralysis around her loss is what led her to become an expert in childhood grief in order to help grieving children and to help others to support the children in their lives who have experienced loss.

As a psychologist and child psychoanalyst, Dr. Masur has helped many children recognize and express their feelings after loss. In How Children Grieve: What Adults Miss, and What They Can Do to Help (Alcove Press, 2024), Masur shares her expertise with caregivers of all kinds, giving them the tools they need to help a child or teenager mourn, move forward, and make meaning of terrible loss.

Prior to a high school teaching career, Judith Tanen worked in the visual arts field. Still, her educational pursuits have been driven by a passion for language in its varied forms, specifically, communication, intersubjectivity and the hidden worlds inside our minds. These interests prompted this current pursuit: travelling into the psyche and gaining insight into the complicated, inexplicable and always enlightening ways of living and making sense of experience -- indeed, life itself.

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Vic Sedlak, "The Psychoanalyst's Superegos, Ego Ideals and Blind Spots: The Emotional Development of the Clinician" (Routledge, 2019) Sep 09, 2024

Psychotherapists and psychoanalysts enter an emotional relationship when they treat a patient; no matter how experienced they may be, their personalities inform but also limit their ability to recognize and give thought to what happens in the consulting room.

The Psychoanalyst’s Superegos, Ego Ideals and Blind Spots: The Emotional Development of the Clinician (Routledge, 2019) investigates the nature of these constrictions on the clinician’s sensitivity. Vic Sedlak examines clinicians’ fear of a superego which threatens to become censorious of themselves or their patient and their need to aspire to standards demanded by their ego ideals. These dynamic forces are considered in relation to treatments which fail, to supervision and to recent innovations in psychoanalytic technique. The difficulty of giving thought to hostility is particularly stressed. Richly illustrated with clinical material, this book will enable practitioners to recognize the unconscious forces which militate against their clinical effectiveness.

Vic Sedlak is a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society in private practice in the North of England.

Christopher Russell is a Psychoanalyst in Chelsea, Manhattan.

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Mariana Craciun, "From Skepticism to Competence: How American Psychiatrists Learn Psychotherapy" (U Chicago Press, 2024) Sep 08, 2024

From Skepticism to Competence: How American Psychiatrists Learn Psychotherapy(U Chicago Press, 2024) offers an examination of how novice psychiatrists come to understand the workings of the mind - and the nature of medical expertise - as they are trained in psychotherapy. While many medical professionals can physically examine the body to identify and understand its troubles - a cardiologist can take a scan of the heart, an endocrinologist can measure hormone levels, an oncologist can locate a tumor - psychiatrists have a much harder time unlocking the inner workings of the brain or its metaphysical counterpart, the mind.

In From Skepticism to Competence, sociologist Mariana Craciun delves into the radical uncertainty of psychiatric work by following medical residents in the field as they learn about psychotherapeutic methods. Most are skeptical at the start. While they are well equipped to treat brain diseases through prescription drugs, they must set their expectations aside and learn how to navigate their patients’ minds. Their instructors, experienced psychotherapists, help the budding psychiatrists navigate this new professional terrain by revealing the inner workings of talk and behavioral interventions and stressing their utility in a world dominated by pharmaceutical treatments. In the process, the residents examine their own doctoring assumptions and develop new competencies in psychotherapy. Exploring the world of contemporary psychiatric training, Craciun illustrates novice physicians’ struggles to understand the nature and meaning of mental illness and, with it, their own growing medical expertise.

Mariana Craciun is Associate Professor in Sociology at Tulane University. As a cultural sociologist, she is interested in the issues of expertise, professions, science, and technology. Her writings on psychotherapeutic expertise and authority and was published in top peer reviewed journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, Theory and Society, Qualitative Sociology, and the Sociology of Health and Illness.

Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of environmental anthropology, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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How Mechanisms of Psychoanalytic Defense Perpetuate Racism in America Sep 03, 2024

The third podcast in this series focuses on an article written by Dr. Dionne Powell who participated in the 2014 documentary, “Black Psychoanalysts Speak,” which was an excellent film created by Basia Winograd. Dr. Powell’s JAPA article written in 2018 was entitled, “Race, African Americans, and Psychoanalysis: Collective Silence in the Therapeutic Situation.” This is a an important illustration of racism in America and ties in nicely with our topic about psychoanalytic mechanisms of defense.

Dr. Karyne E. Messina is a psychologist and child, adolescent and adult psychoanalyst. In addition to maintaining a full-time private practice in Chevy Chase, Maryland, she is on the medical staff of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland which is part of Johns Hopkins Medicine. She is a podcast host for the New Books Network and chair of the Department of Psychoanalytic Education’s (DPE) Scholarship and Writing section which is part of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA). She is a member of the AI Council of APsA (CAI). She has also written and edited six books. Her topics focus on applying psychoanalytic ideas to real-world issues we all face in our complex world.

Dr. Felecia Powell-Williams is a child and adolescent supervising psychoanalyst at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies in Houston, Texas, where she also holds the position of President of Board of Directors. Dr. Felecia Powell-Williams is also a faculty member in the Child and Adult Training Programs. In addition, she provides clinical supervision for the State of Texas licensing board, as well as supervision as a Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor with the Association for Play Therapy. She is also the chair of the Department of Psychoanalytic Education’s (DPE) Diversity section which is part of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA).

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Barnaby Barratt, "Beyond Psychotherapy: On Becoming a (Radical) Psychoanalyst" (Routledge, 2019) Aug 25, 2024

In Beyond Psychotherapy: On Becoming a (Radical) Psychoanalyst (Routledge, 2019), Barnaby Barratt illuminates a new perspective on the radicality of genuinely psychoanalytic discourse as the unique science of healing.

Starting with an incisive critique of the ideological conformism of psychotherapy, Barratt defines the method of psychoanalysis against the conventional definition, which emphasizes the practice of arriving at useful interpretations about our personal existence. Instead, he shows how a negatively dialectical and deconstructive praxis successfully ‘attacks’ the self-enclosures of interpretation, allowing the speaking-listening subject to become existentially and spiritually open to hidden dimensions of our lived-experience. He also demonstrates how the erotic deathfulness of our being-in-the-world is the ultimate source of all the many resistances to genuinely psychoanalytic praxis, and the reason Freud’s discipline has so frequently been reduced to various models of psychotherapeutic treatment. Focusing on the free-associative dimension of psychoanalysis, Barratt both explores what psychoanalytic processes can achieve that the psychotherapeutic one cannot, and consider the sociopolitical implications of the radical psychoanalytic ‘take’ on the human condition. The book also offers a detailed and compassionate pointer for those wanting to train as psychoanalysts, guiding them away from what Barratt calls the ‘trade-school mentality pervading most training institutes today.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles. He is candidate at The Psychoanalytic Center of California. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com and his website address is https://www.psychologytoday.com/profile/228002

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Donald Moss, “At War with the Obvious: Disruptive Thinking in Psychoanalysis” (Routledge, 2018) Aug 20, 2024

What does Donald Moss have against common sense, Captain Obvious, sincerity, and everything duh!? At War with the Obvious: Disruptive Thinking in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2018) turns to culture and the clinic to reach beneath semblance, the lure of affect, and the comforts of doxa, and to discuss “erotic thought,” rupture, and conceptual transgression. Moss is interested in how flashes of profound epistemological disorientation and isolation are transmuted into potentiality and theory: from fragmenting “zones of uncertainty” and the suffocating flood of experience we might — as analysts, artists, writers, and political actors — manage our way back to sociality and thinking, safely ashore and reconstituted but not the same.

As in his previous books, Moss writes courageously, revealing his own periodic struggles with smugness and easy solutions – moments when he, unable to analyze or gather himself – lashed out, fled, and recovered with great difficulty. In a particularly compelling chapter, Moss describes his experience of terror, shame, and rage when a violent patient threatens to hit him in the face and leaves the consulting room shouting “faggot!” The epithet later erupts in Moss as he waits on a subway platform next to an effeminate man and resounds in the reader as Moss parses his identifications and disidentifications, both with the ostensibly gay stranger and with physical and psychic vulnerability.

In the chapter, “On thinking and not being able to think,” Moss reflects on what happens when he observes objects, specifically performance art and documentary photographs, and endures an unexpected collapse of the frame, a sudden loss of legibility. Moss recounts such a disintegration while viewing photos of Abu Ghraib, and attributes it not to the photos’ disturbing subject matter but to their uncanny registering of his look: when the spectator’s gaze appears within the framed spectacle his subjectivity is obliterated. Captured by the photograph, losing his privileged perspective and link to other audience members, Moss is momentarily rendered an object. Without a stable “I” he is unable to interpret. He concludes that the capacity to create a new frame and thereby regain distance depends on the re-establishment of a transferential “we” — a refinding of one’s place among an expanded and transformed community of viewers and readers.

The book’s most original and moving chapter, “I and You,” is the result of a yearlong collection of patients’ utterances. Moss wrote down one sentence from every session, collated each day’s lines, and published them in abridged form in At War With the Obvious (all 154 days are presented in a separate book). Together they constitute a dirge, a mournful cry made no less searing by its unstable and acousmatic authorship.

Anna Fishzon, PhD is Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol, UK. She is a candidate at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) and author of Fandom, Authenticity, and Opera: Mad Acts and Letter Scenes in Fin-de-siecle Russia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Her articles have appeared in Slavic Review, The Candidate Journal, Russian Literature Journal, Slavic and East European Journal, Laboratorium, and other academic publications. She can be reached at afishzon@gmail.com.

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Sudhir Kakar, "The Indian Jungle: Psychoanalysis and Non-Western Civilizations" (Karnac, 2024) Aug 17, 2024

In this podcast, Ashis Roy (Psychoanalyst (IPA) and author of the recently published book Intimacy in Alienation: A Psychoanalytic Study of Hindu-Muslim Relationships (Yoda Press, 2024) is in conversation with Dhwani Shah, MD. Shah is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst currently practicing in Princeton, NJ. He is a clinical associate faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and a Supervising Analyst and instructor at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia.

Together they engage with Late Sudhir Kakar´s last book the Indian Jungle: Psychoanalysis and Non-Western Civilizations (Karnac, 2024). Shah reflects on Kakar´s contributions to psychoanalysis and on some of the pillars in Kakar´s writing.

About the Indian Jungle

For more than a century, the cultural imagination of psychoanalysis has been assumed and largely continues to be assumed as Western. Although the terroirs of psychoanalysis in South America, France, Italy, England, the United States, and so on have important differences, they all share a strong family resemblance which distinguishes them clearly from the cultural imaginations of Indian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and other non-Western terroirs.

Fundamental ideas about human relationships, family, marriage, and gender often remain unexamined and pervade the analytic space as if they are universally valid. Thus, ideas that are historically and culturally only true of and limited to modern Western, specifically European and North American middle-class experience, have been incorporated unquestioningly into psychoanalytic thought.

In the intellectual climate of our times, with the rise of relativism in the human sciences and politically with the advent of decolonization, the cultural and historical transcendence of psychoanalytic thought can no longer be taken for granted. Insights from clinical work embedded in the cultural imaginations of non-Western civilizations could help psychoanalysis rethink some of its theories of the human psyche, extending these to cover a fuller range of human experience. These cultural imaginations are an invaluable resource for the move away from a universal psychoanalysis to a more global one that remains aware of but is not limited by its origins in the modern West. This book of essays aims to be a step in that journey, of altering the self-perception of psychoanalysis from ‘one size fits all’ into a more nuanced enterprise that reflects and is enriched by cultural particularities.

The perfect book for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, cultural psychologists, anthropologists, students of South Asian, cultural, and post-colonial studies, and anyone interested in the current and possible future shape of psychoanalytic thought.

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Dianne Elise, "Creativity and the Erotic Dimensions of the Analytic Field" (Routledge, 2019) Aug 13, 2024

Today I talked to Dianne Elise about her book Creativity and the Erotic Dimensions of the Analytic Field (Routledge, 2019).

To be in the presence of a person—a woman in fact, and Dianne Elise in particular—who follows her instincts, someone who builds theory from the ground up, and whose theories keep evolving, enlivens the interlocutor. I almost hesitate to say more about this interview for fear it will not live up to the interview itself!

We could not record our eye contact, such as it can be (hobbled and skewed) on Zoom, but that we were in a lot of contact during our time together can probably be felt, acoustically and otherwise. I think she is among the most cutting edge thinkers in our field, precisely because she says new things, or things we all know to be true but hesitate (our inhibiting ourselves for fear of making some people uneasy) to articulate. She dares to answer Freud’s question regarding what a woman wants, and then she goes even further explaining, deconstructing really, why that question needs to remain never-endingly elusive.

For about 25 years Elise has been persistently working on opening up psychoanalytic thinking about female development, creativity and the erotics of motherhood and clinical work. Here she shares with us a bit of the story of her own development which includes her foundational encounter with feminism in the 1970s and with the writings of Freud and the thinking of Thomas Ogden thereafter. Her first publication reflects her foray into the work of Mahler, Bergman and Pine, which led her coming to question the presumption that girls and boys share the same experience of early life. This was followed by her utter re-working of the so called “negative oedipal”, moving it from the category of anomaly and placing it in the realm of the average and the expectable for girls. Not quite Winnicottian, Feminist, Relational or Field, she has blended these schools of thought to create something of her own—dare I say, and the play on words is simply irresistible, Elysian?

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The Role of Psychoanalytic Mechanisms of Defense; What They Are and How They Work Aug 07, 2024

Using one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s major ideas as a springboard for their discussion, “The truth will set you free,” the host and co-host discussed psychoanalytic mechanism of defense starting with denial which can emerge when a topic is too painful or difficult to face. A productive dialogue followed that focused on Dr. Filipe Copeland’s description of two different types of denial, Strategic Denial and Psychological Denial as described in “The American Psychoanalyst” (TAP) in an interview with Dr. Austin Ratner, editor-in-chief of the magazine. Amanual Elias’s paper, “Racism as Neglect and Denial” was also mentioned. Stay tuned for more discussions about the ways in which psychoanalytic thinking can help to explain racism in America.

Dr. Karyne E. Messina is a psychologist and child, adolescent and adult psychoanalyst. In addition to maintaining a full-time private practice in Chevy Chase, Maryland, she is on the medical staff of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland which is part of Johns Hopkins Medicine. She is a podcast host for the New Books Network and chair of the Department of Psychoanalytic Education’s (DPE) Scholarship and Writing section which is part of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA). She is a member of the AI Council of APsA (CAI). She has also written and edited seven books. Her topics focus on applying psychoanalytic ideas to real-world issues we all face in our complex world.

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Avgi Saketopoulou, "Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia" (NYU Press, 2023) Jul 08, 2024

Today I talked to Avgi Saketopoulou about her book Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia (NYU Press, 2023).

My conversation with Dr. Saketopoulou begins in the clinic “one of the most scary and difficult places one can find oneself in” she says because it is in the consulting room that sometimes things “become traumatic for the first time.” It is here that Saketopoulou first shares her affection for “early radical psychoanalytic thinking” which

“put a lot of faith on the possibilities that come from that wounding and from the kind of potentialities that can arise in something becoming kind of like opening up in the consulting room into pain, as opposed to what we are mostly turning towards to as a field in ways that I find both distressing and disappointing, like the idea of healing wounds, of closing up injuries, as if we could ever do that anyway, which I think we can't, rather than embracing or giving ourselves over to what I think is both the insurgent and most interesting radical potential of psychoanalytic treatments in in getting to that place where sort of like injury, wound, like the past opens up to become not just something that we lived through or something that we were told about, but something that becomes yours.”

As clinicians we are susceptible to counter transferential enactments when we cooperate with terms such as damage and “too muchnesss”. To engage with these concepts without considering what they imply risks missing “the way in which whiteness is smuggled into our theories.” “This idea of damage implies the idea of intactness” an idea, says Saketopoulou, “allied with whiteness.” When considering what might be considered “too much” she asks us to “move us away from the almost moralizing concern that psychoanalysis has had about too muchness as if there is a way to do kind of like the Goldilocks measurement of like not too not too much, just right.”

Our discussion moved easily from the clinic, to a theoretical "geeking out" over how her concept of overwhelm is “not in the purview of the repetition compulsion” to “social contract theory 101”

During the interview, reference is made to the original 1905 edition of Freud’s Three Essays. Here, Saketopoulou relates to Freud as one might to an aging rock star; preferring their earlier work. She argues that this original text will help us live and practice a “psychoanalysis that is worth fighting for” and what “it means to take seriously, these kinds of entanglements with violence, with trauma, without seeking to make them disappear or to reduce them by, quote unquote, understanding them.”

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Adam Phillips, "On Giving Up" (FSG, 2024) Jul 01, 2024

To give up or not to give up? The question can feel inescapable but the answer is never simple.

Giving up our supposed vices is one thing; giving up on life itself is quite another. One form of self-sacrifice feels positive, something to admire and aspire to, while the other is profoundly unsettling, if not actively undesirable.

There are always, it turns out, both good and bad sacrifices, but it is not always clear beforehand which is which. We give something up because we believe we can no longer go on as we are. In this sense, giving up is a critical moment--an attempt to make a different future.

In On Giving Up(FSG, 2024), the acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips illuminates both the gaps and the connections between the many ways of giving up and helps us to address the central question: What must we give up in order to feel more alive?

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John Thomas Maier, "The Disabled Will: A Theory of Addiction" (Routledge, 2024) Jun 26, 2024

John T. Maier's The Disabled Will: A Theory of Addiction (Routledge Press, 2024) defends a comprehensive new vision of what addiction is and how people with addictions should be treated. The author argues that, in addition to physical and intellectual disabilities, there are volitional disabilities - disabilities of the will - and that addiction is best understood as a species of volitional disability. This theory serves to illuminate long-standing philosophical and psychological perplexities about addiction and addictive motivation. It articulates a normative framework within which to understand prohibition, harm reduction, and other strategies that aim to address addiction. The argument of this book is that these should ultimately be evaluated in terms of reasonable accommodations for addicted people and that the priority of addiction policy should be the provision of such accommodations. What makes this book distinctive is that it understands addiction as a fundamentally political problem, an understanding that is suggested by standard legal approaches to addiction, but which has not received a sustained defense in the previous philosophical or psychological literature. This text marks a significant advance in the theory of addiction, one which should reshape our understanding of addiction policy and its proper aims.

Jeff Adler is an ex-linguist and occasional contributor to New Books Network!

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A Psychoanalytic Overview of Racism in America Jun 24, 2024

The first podcast in this series was inspired by a documentary film made in 2014 called “Black Analysts Speak” as well as some of the findings in the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis published in 2023. It also considered the reasons why racism has persisted so long in America including perspectives from a psychoanalytic vantage point. Mechanism of defense, particularly projective identification was discussed as one specific reason why change has been slow. The host and co-host also talked about the some of the reasons why it is important for white people to listen to the Black experience. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s book, Where do we go from here, Chaos or Community was also considered because of its relevance today.

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Adrian Johnston, "Infinite Greed: The Inhuman Selfishness of Capital" (Columbia UP, 2024) Jun 22, 2024

Marxism and psychoanalysis have a rich and complicated relationship to one another, with countless figures and books written on the possible intersection of the two. Our guest today, Adrian Johnston, returns to NBN to discuss his own latest entry into the genre, Infinite Greed: The Inhuman Selfishness of Capital (Columbia UP, 2024). While the book does retread some already-covered territory, Johnston’s book stands out as a unique entry in a crowded field by emphasizing the theoretical overlap of psychoanalytic concepts with the economic core of Marx’s thinking. Libidinal economics are turned into, well, economics and vice-versa in this detailed and rigorously written study that deserves to become one of the canonical texts in the Freudo-Marxist tradition.

Adrian Johnston is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico and a faculty member of the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute. He is the author of numerous books, including three previously discussed on this podcast; A New German Idealism: Hegel, Zizek and Dialectical Materialism, and Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism volumes one and two. He is also the coeditor, with Slavoj Zizek and Todd McGowan of the book series Diaeresis.

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Madman in the White House? Jun 16, 2024

Did Woodrow Wilson's daddy issues cause World War II? And what might this teach us about our contemporary political plight? Jordan Osserman talks with psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster and historian Patrick Weil about The Madman in the White House: Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt, and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson(Harvard UP, 2023). While conducting research at Yale, Patrick Weil chanced upon the unpublished and unredacted original manuscript of Sigmund Freud and Ambassador William Bullit's notorious psychobiography of former US President Woodrow Wilson - sat in an unlabelled dusty box. Weil's investigation of this incredible and poorly understood Freud-Bullit collaboration led him to radically reconsider Woodrow Wilson's role in the Treaty of Versailles, and the value of psychoanalysis in illuminating a self-sabotage of world historical proportions.

Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in New York City. She is the author of the forthcoming On Breathing (Peninsula, 2025), Disorganisation & Sex (Divided, 2022), The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis (Karnac, 2011) and Conversion Disorder (Columbia University Press, 2018); she also co-wrote, with Simon Critchley, Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine (Pantheon, 2013). She contributes regularly to Artforum, The New York Times and the New York Review of Books.

Patrick Weil is a Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and a senior research fellow at the French National Research Center in the University of Paris1, Pantheon-Sorbonne. Professor Weil's work focuses on comparative immigration, citizenship, and church-state law and policy. His most recent books are The Madman in the White House. Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson (Harvard University Press, 2023) and De La Laïcité en France (Grasset, 2021). Weil is also, since 2006, the founder and the chairman of the NGO Libraries Without Borders (Bibliothèques Sans Frontières).

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Jean Petrucelli et al., "Patriarchy and Its Discontents: Psychoanalytic Perspectives" (Routledge, 2022) Jun 08, 2024

Patriarchy and Its Discontents: Psychoanalytic Perspectives(Routledge, 2022) joins luminaries in contemporary psychoanalysis with pioneers of feminism to provide a timely analysis of the crushing effects of patriarchy and the role that psychoanalysis can play in moving us into a future defined by mutuality and respect.

Departing from the contemporary psychoanalytic view that the socio-political and intrapsychic are inextricably linked, contributors use psychoanalysis as a tool to demystify and even dismantle patriarchy, while also examining how our theories, practices, and institutions have been implicated in it. The issues under examination here include important and often under-theorized topics such as institutional responses to boundary violations, the search for a black-feminist psychoanalytic theory, patriarchal enactments within the trans community, the persistence of patriarchy within contemporary psychoanalysis, and the impacts of patriarchy on diverse patient populations and ways to address this clinically.

This book represents the first anthology comprised of voices from both within and outside the psychoanalytic realm, outlining a contemporary feminist psychoanalysis for both an analytic and non-analytic audience. It is invaluable for both psychoanalysts and for those in gender studies wishing to draw on psychoanalytic thinking.

About the editors:

Jean Petrucelli is a training and supervising analyst, director and co-founder of the Eating Disorders, Compulsions and Addictions Service (EDCAS), a one-year certificate program, and founder and chair of the Conference Advisory Board (CAB) at the William Alanson White Institute.

Sarah Schoen is a training and supervising analyst at the William Alanson White Institute, faculty and supervisor at the Eating Disorders, Compulsions and Addictions Program at the William Alanson White Institute, and clinical professor of Psychology at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis.

Naomi Snider is a psychoanalyst in New York City and a graduate of the William Alanson White Institute’s Certificate Program in Psychoanalysis.

Helena Vissing, PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California. She can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023).

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Linda Hopkins and Steven Kuchuck, eds., "Diary of a Fallen Psychoanalyst: The Work Books of Masud Khan 1967-1972" (Karnac, 2022) Jun 03, 2024

Masud Khan (1924-1989), was an eminent and, ultimately, scandalous British psychoanalyst who trained and practised in London during an important period in the development of psychoanalysis. From August 1967 to March 1980, he wrote his 39 volume Work Books, a diary containing observations and reflections on his own life, the world of psychoanalysis, his evolving theoretical formulations, Western culture, and the turbulent social and political developments of the time.

In Diary of a Fallen Psychoanalyst: The Work Books of Masud Khan 1967-1972 (Karnac, 2022), readers will find fascinating entries on Khan's colleague and mentor Donald Winnicott and other well-known analysts of the period, including Anna Freud. Also featuring in these pages are leaders in the world of culture and the arts such as Julie Andrews, the Redgraves and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Dr Linda Hopkins trained in mental health and became a licensed clinical psychologist and then she underwent Psychoanalytic training. Her book on Masud Khan, the False Self that appeared in 2006 has been widely read and appreciated. She has received the prestigious Goethe Award and the famous Gradiva award.

Dr Steven Kuchuck is a psychoanalyst based in New York and is an expert on Relational Psychoanalysis. His background is both distinctively academic and clinically rigorous. He has taught extensively across the world and in particular at the doctoral program at New York University. He has written several books and was also the president of the International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis. One of his extremely well known books is titled the Relational Revolution in Psychoanalysis.

In this interview Linda and Steven, talk about their collaborative effort in putting together this book, which contains a section of Khan´s workbooks from 1967-1972. We talk about the difficulties in putting this volume together and we also go into Khan´s life and his mind, the climate that he created and the cross-cultural nature of his identity. Masud Khan´s workbooks are set to find a space in an archive at the Freud Museum London.

Ashis Roy (Ph.D) is a Psychoanalyst (IPA) and the author of Intimacy in Alienation: A Psychoanalytic Study of Hindu-Muslim Relationships

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Peter A. Levine, "An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey" (Park Street Press, 2024) May 30, 2024

In An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey(Park Street Press, 2024), renowned developer of Somatic Experiencing Peter A. Levine shares his personal journey to heal his own severe childhood trauma offering profound insights into the evolution of his innovative trauma healing method.

Casting himself as a modern-day Chiron, the wounded healer of Greek mythology, Dr. Levine describes, in graphic detail, the violence of his childhood juxtaposed with specific happy and exuberant memories, which helped him prepare for coming to terms with his horrifying experiences. He shares his inner experience of being guided through Somatic Experiencing (SE) to illuminate and untangle his traumatic wounds and describes the mysterious and unexpected dreams and visions that have guided him through his life’s work. Exploring his dream visitations from Albert Einstein in depth, he explains how he came to view Einstein as his personal spirit guide and mentor and how he later discovered his own personal and profound real-life connection to him through his mother.

Describing his breakthroughs in developing Somatic Experiencing, the author details how he helped thousands of others before resolving his own trauma years later with the support of his method. He explains how the SE method is derived from his studies of wild animals in their natural environments, neurobiology, and more than 50 years of clinical observations. He describes his education and career as well as his encounters with noteworthy figures such as somaticists Charlotte Selver and Ida Rolf, ethological zoologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, and autism pioneer Mira Rothenberg.

Unveiling the inner story of the man who changed the way psychologists, doctors, and healers understand and treat the wounds of trauma and abuse, this autobiography reveals how anyone suffering from trauma has a valuable story to tell. And by telling our stories, we can catalyze the return of hope, dignity, and wholeness.

Peter A. Levine, Ph.D., holds a doctorate in Medical and Biological Physics from the University of California at Berkeley and a doctorate in Psychology from International University. The recipient of four lifetime achievement awards, he is the author of several books, including An Autobiography of Trauma and Waking the Tiger, which has now been printed in 33 countries and has sold over a million copies.

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Betty Milan, "Analyzed by Lacan: A Personal Account" (Bloomsbury, 2023) Apr 15, 2024

Analyzed by Lacan: A Personal Account(Bloomsbury, 2023) brings together the first English translations of Why Lacan, Betty Milan's memoir of her analysis with Lacan in the 1970s, and her play, Goodbye Doctor, inspired by her experience.

Why Lacan provides a unique and valuable perspective on how Lacan worked as psychoanalyst as well as his approach to psychoanalytic theory. Milan's testimony shows that Lacan's method of working was based on the idea that the traditional way of interpreting provoked resistance.

Prior to Why Lacan, Milan wrote a play, Goodbye Doctor, based on her experience as Lacan's patient. The play is structured around the sessions of Seriema with the Doctor. Through the analysis, Seriema discovers why she cannot give birth, namely, an unconscious desire to satisfy the will of her father who didn't authorize her to conceive. She ceases to be the victim of her unconscious, grasps the possibility of choosing a father for her child and thus becoming a mother. Goodbye Doctor has been adapted into a film, Adieu Lacan, by the director Richard Ledes.

Analyzed by Lacan features an Introduction by Milan to both works as well as a new interview with Mari Ruti about her writing and Lacan.

Matthew Pieknik, LCSW, MA is a psychoanalyst and clinical supervisor in private practice in Manhattan. He can be reached at matthewpieknik@gmail.com. www.matthewlpieknik.com

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Doris Brothers and Jon Sletvold, "A New Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory, Practice and Supervision: Talking Bodies" (Routledge, 2023) Mar 05, 2024

By viewing psychoanalysis through the lens of embodiment, Brothers and Sletvold suggest a shift away from traditional concept-based theory and offer new ways to understand traumatic experiences, to describe the therapeutic exchange and to enhance the supervisory process.

Since traditional psychoanalytic language does not readily lend itself to embodied experience, the authors place particular emphasis on the words I, you, we and world, to describe the flow of human attention. Offering new insights into trauma, this book demonstrates how traumatic experiences and efforts to regain certainty in one’s psychological life involve profound disruptions of this flow. With a new understanding of transference, resistance and interpretation, the authors ultimately show how much can be gained from viewing the analytic exchange as a meeting between foreign bodies.

Grounded in detailed case material, A New Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory, Practice and Supervision: Talking Bodies (Routledge, 2023) will change the way therapists from all disciplines understand the therapeutic process and how viewing it in terms of talking bodies enhances their efforts to heal.

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Louis Rothschild, "Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons: Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities" (Karnac, 2023) Mar 04, 2024

Today I spoke with Dr. Louis Rothschild about his new book Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities (Karnac, 2024). Our conversation moved freely between theory, generational attitudes, thinkers, and personal vignettes.

What is a good enough father? What is the difference between a man of achievement and a man of power? Who is the father of the mother’s mind? What happens when a father enables holding? How is masculinity valued by other men? What is meant by phrases such as a “man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do?” Why exactly do we need to “call the boy’s father?” How is the father’s role rendered invisible? These are some of the questions subsumed in the broader question of “Who nurtures and who is nurtured?” (And does the myth of the “self-made-man” indicate a man who exists without nurturing?)

“What I'm arguing”, says Rothschild, “is that that sexist dichotomy is a mirage in its own right and that attachment strings needn't be severed. They can be reworked over the lifespan and this idea of having this clean tidy break and going off to live your life where liberating the kid from this regressive maternal bond is the path to individuation, I think that's just patently false.”

Like an analyst, the book has been in formation for many years. “Percolating and distilling” as Dr. Rothschild says at the top of the interview. Motivated by the “way the culture was shifting” he sensed “that things I take for granted are actually a minority opinion.” Rothschild’s survey of sons includes mythology; Oedipus scripture; Issac. As well as the sons of literature; Sendak’s Max, Silverstein’s Boy, White’s Swan, and others. Affect rich case illustrations are also presented. The issues addressed in the book are the ones we are contending with in in analysis. They are the discussions we are having with our fathers, sons, and families. Rothschild’s book is essential and meets the clinical moment.

“Louis Rothschild’s book is both an outstanding representative of ‘return to the father’ and a unique explication of psychoanalytic thought on its own. This is a book of great literary elegance and impressive psychological wisdom.” Salman Akhtar, MD

Christopher Russell, LP is a psychoanalyst in Chelsea, Manhattan. He is a member of the faculty and supervising analyst at The Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies and The New York Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. His primary theorists are Sándor Ferenczi and Hyman Spotnitz.

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Dominique Scarfone, "The Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche" (Unconscious in Translation, 2023) Feb 29, 2024

The Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche(Unconscious in Translation, 2023) compiles papers written by Dominique Scarfone. Each paper is followed by a conversation about the paper between the author and Avgi Saketopoulou.

"I propose we have a conversation after each of your essays as a way to engage your work, to ask for clarifications on the reader's behalf, and to multiply the entry points to your thinking. I imagine that these conversations will work cumulatively, talking the reader deeper into each chapter and also showing your way of thinking not by describing it but by exposing the reader to it 'in vivo.' Part of what your work has offered me personally, which I hope these exchanges will also convey to the reader, is the sheer pleasure of thinking about theory with you -- that it's not a stale or inert process but that, on the contrary, it is an experience in itself." -Avgi Saketopoulou

"While an indisputable fact about human reality is that of communication and its corollary, making sense of what is communicated, only psychoanalysis takes notice of the particular situation created when communication happens between an adult and an infans-literally: the one who does not speak. Nor is it given much attention, even among psychoanalysts, that there is a special 'noise' carried over in the channels of communication between the two, a noise resulting from the difference regarding the unconscious sexual dimension." -Dominique Scarfone

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Helena Vissing, "Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Trauma Treatment for Perinatal Mental Health" (Routledge, 2023) Dec 27, 2023

Today we spoke with Dr. Helena Vissing about her new book Somatic Maternal Healing Psychodynamic and Somatic Trauma Treatment for Perinatal Mental Health(Routledge, 2023).What does the research of neuro science, immunology and biology tell us about the complex links between trauma, stress, inflammatory responses, and postpartum depression? What are the somatic counter transferences specific to the perinatal transition? What is the difference between empowered mothering and feminist mothering? What are the five tenets of empowered mothering? These are some of the questions we discuss with Dr. Vissing. All of them aimed at answering the larger clinical question, “What do you do with a new mother who walks into your office - how do we sit with new mothers and parents who are shaking to their core?”

Initially a school psychologist specializing in Developmental Psychology Play Therapy, Dr. Vissing was already interested in psychoanalytic or psychodynamic perspectives. When beginning her training in somatic approaches she was really excited to “learn a new modality to deepen my work in the maternal mental health specialization and specifically the transition to motherhood.” However, working in a “pretty big” community of somatic training practitioners Vissing was “a bit surprised and also a bit disappointed” to discover that there was not really a subgroup specifically dedicated to maternal mental health adaptations and that a “particular focus on the mother's perspective was missing.” Struck by this this lack Vissing became motivated and determined to “create a bridge between the two.”

For Vissing the bridge is a biopsychosocial approach which is both a “clinical attitude” and a “guiding principle” that addresses the frustrations she encountered when studying maternal mental health felt like “jumping from one paradigm to the other where the paradigms were not connecting…were not communicating and I was frustrated by that because we know all of this interacts … we know that the enormous intensity of the hormonal shifts of the perinatal transitions will impact emotional health and mental health.”

Dr. Vissing’s hope is that by reading this book, “as a clinician you will feel less apprehension about the tender work of trauma healing in the perinatal period.”

As hosts we both noted that Somatic Maternal Healing is a rigorously researched and clinically informed book. The majority of the citations reflect current findings, including research into pandemic stress and resonances in telehealth.

Golzar Selbe Naghshineh, is a training and supervising licensed Psychoanalyst with special expertise in reproductive and maternal mental health. She created and built the Network For The Advancement of Perinatal Support – an integrative mental health program for OBGYN offices and fertility clinics that she launched in 2014 at the renowned Downtown Women OBGYN practice in New York City. Naghshineh is also teaching faculty at the New York Graduate School of Psychoanalysis and the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies in New York.

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A Conversation with Austin Ratner, the New Editor of "The American Psychoanalyst" Dec 06, 2023

Austin Ratner has an interesting background. After graduating from medical school he decided to change careers. Rather than continuing in medicine he became a fiction writer. This shift seemed to be a good decision since he won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish literature for his first novel, The Jump Artist. He also wrote The Psychoanalyst’s Aversion to Proof which demonstrated his thorough understanding of Freud’s brilliance as well as some of the difficulties he encountered.

Currently, Austin has taken on a new role as the editor of The American Psychoanalyst(TAP). He intends to increase the visibility of psychoanalysis by broadening the scope of issues that psychoanalysis can help solve. With the assistance of Austin Hughes who creates new ways of telling stories that inspire readers and creative designer, Melissa Overton, who has designed many impressive projects including collaborative creations at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Austin and his team are redefining how powerful psychoanalysis can be to a myriad of professions.

Along with artistic and design changes, the magazine now includes regular sections on research, art and culture, work and education written in part by professional lay writers who know how to “speak” to people in other fields. A social media content manager is helping to develop strategies that are intended to engage readers by organizing and delivering digital content to online platforms.

Lucas McGranahan who was copyeditor for the old TAP is making major contributions as managing editor for the new TAP. In addition to being a vital part of this new initiative Lucas is also editor of Tableau, the humanities magazine of the University of Chicago.

Austin also has contributed to the new magazine by writing about racism and the challenges we face due to its devastating effect on all of us. In “Beyond Immolation and Infighting” he points out the fact that diversity takes work while highlighting the importance of the Holmes Commission Report, “In one of the many rhetorically powerful passages, the Holmes Report offers this gateway to a psychoanalytic understanding of systemic racism and obstacles to seeing it and stopping it” (Ratner, 2023).1

1“The Holmes Commission on Racial Equality (CO-REAP) was established within the American Psychoanalytic Association on recommendation of the Black Psychoanalysts Speak national organization. CO-REAP’s purpose is to identify and to find remedies for apparent and implicit manifestations of structural racism that may reside within American psychoanalysis. The Final Report is based on the study of American psychoanalytic institutes, training centers and societies within and across different organizational auspices.

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Dhwani Shah, "The Analyst's Torment: Unbearable Mental States in Countertransference" (Karnac Books, 2022) Nov 25, 2023

Today I spoke with Dr. Dhwani Shah about his new book The Analyst’s Torment: Unbearable Mental States in Countertransference (Karnac Books, 2022). The son of a sculptor mother and an internist father Shah has always been interested in subjectivity, aesthetics, art, and “how to find objectivity in subjectivity.” He began his practice with the fantasy that “I could understand things, I would know things and then I would be able to treat my patients, heal them, heal myself.” However, when his two-year-old son became (and remains) non-verbal and got the diagnosis of autism these fantasies were “dismantled”. This changed his “attitude about this search for knowledge” and evolved into different way of being with patients and learning how to “painfully accept emotional truth.”

Shah’s torments are broken into 8 chapters aimed at helping us understand “what really gets in our way of us really being able to be with our patients.”

Arrogance: the manner in which we can arrogantly transform people into cartoon characters for our arrogant purposes.
Racism: if you do not come across any racist or prejudiced parts of yourself or your patients, you have not been paying close enough attention.
Dread: which signals an unbearable emotional truth.
Erotic Dread: of our own erotic desire to work with patients.
Dissociation: as a process or a structure.
Shame: How shame lies uncomfortably close to the core of psychoanalysis.
Hopelessness: undermines the inherent vitality and exploration in the analytic space.
Jealousy: In analysis we are all excluded from paradise.

Shah hopes that the structure of these chapters will give us ways to talk “about the struggle of what to do with our feelings”. The interview ends with a question familiar to all clinicians: Since these unbearable mental states are unavoidable and ubiquitous in analytic practice, why would anyone do it? “Because” Shah answers, “eventually we break apart, and we’re left with the beauty of the work and a shift from an epistemological way of knowing to a way of being.

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Joan A. Friedman, "Twins in Session: Case Histories in Treating Twinship Issues" (Rocky Pines Press, 2018) Nov 24, 2023

Why would a twin sacrifice her own needs to make sure her same-age sibling is always cared for? What would cause a twin to have panic attacks when he and his brother go away to separate colleges? Why do some twins find it so difficult to develop friendships and romantic relationships? The "twin mystique" and twins' own expectations of their relationship contribute to their difficulties. A therapist who understands the psychology of twins can articulate what's going on between the siblings. Clients will feel validated as well as relieved to gain clarity about a defining aspect of their identity.

Twins in Session: Case Histories in Treating Twinship Issues (Rocky Pines Press, 2018) shows therapists how important the twin connection is, what it means, why it's sometimes more important than the relationship to either parent, and why some twins don't know who they are apart from the twinship. It will help therapists become a trusted outsider who can give twin clients perspective about their twinship issues and assist them in developing healthy relati

Judith Tanen is an LP candidate at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy.

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Emma R. Jones, "Being as Relation in Luce Irigaray" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) Nov 13, 2023

Many scholars have struggled with Irigaray’s focus on sexuate difference, in particular with her claim that it is “ontological,” wondering if this implies a problematically naïve or essentialist account of sexuate difference. As a result, the ethical vision which Irigaray elaborates has not been taken up in a robust way in the fields of philosophy, feminism, or psychoanalysis.

By tracing the notion of relation throughout Irigaray’s work, Being as Relation in Luce Irigaray (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) identifies a rigorous philosophical continuity between the three self-identified “phases” in Irigaray’s thought (despite some critics’ concerns that there is a discontinuity between these phases) and clarifies the relational ontology that underlies Irigaray’s conceptualization of sexuate difference – one that always already implies an ethical project.

Jones demonstrates that an understanding of Irigaray’s Heideggerian inheritance – especially prominent in her later texts – is essential to grasping the sense of the idea that sexuate difference is ontological – it concerns Being, rather than beings. This book further develops potential applications of this ontological notion of a “relational limit” for the fields of philosophy, feminism, and psychotherapy.

Emma R. Jones is a psychotherapist in private practice in the San Francisco East Bay Area. She was educated at the New School, the University of Oregon, where she earned her PhD in philosophy; and the California Institute of Integral studies, where she earned her clinical degree. She is the author of several articles engaging the work of Luce Irigaray as well as phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and ancient Greek philosophy.

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Linda L. Michaels et al.. "Advancing Psychotherapy for the Next Generation: Humanizing Mental Health Policy and Practice" (Routledge, 2023) Nov 07, 2023

Advancing Psychotherapy for the Next Generation: Humanizing Mental Health Policy and Practice (Routledge, 2023) brings together a global community of mental health professionals to offer an impassioned defense of relationship-based depth psychotherapy. Expressing ideas that are integral to the mission of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN), the authors demonstrate a shared vision of a world where this therapy is accessible to all communities. They also articulate the difficulties created by the current mental health diagnostic system and differing conceptualizations of mental distress, the shortsightedness of evidence-based care and research, and the depreciation of depth therapy by many stakeholders.

The authors thoughtfully elucidate the crucial importance of therapies of depth, insight, and relationship in the repertoire of mental health treatment and speak to the implications of PsiAN’s mission both now and in the future.With a distinguished international group of authors and a clear focus on determining a future direction for psychotherapy, this book is essential reading for all psychotherapists.

With a distinguished international group of authors and a clear focus on determining a future direction for psychotherapy, this book is essential reading for all psychotherapists.

Linda Michaels is not only an editor of this book, but the chair and co-founder of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN), consulting editor of Psychoanalytic Inquiry, clinical associate faculty of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, and fellow of the Lauder Institute Global MBA program. Linda is a psychologist with a private practice in Chicago.

Judith Tanen is an LP candidate at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy.

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Adam Blum et al., "Here I'm Alive: The Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis" (Columbia UP, 2023) Oct 15, 2023

Today we have a group session (read: an hour and a half) with the authors Adam Blum, Peter Goldberg, and Michal Levin discussing their new book Here I’m Alive: The Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis(Columbia University Press, 2023). Acknowledging that “We’re not the first to think about music in the clinical situation” the authors focused on the analytic project “as a kind of music in its own right.” With an interest in sensory, non-representational experiences. “We settled on music as a primordial operating system that all human beings are brought into.”

We begin the interview with each author sharing their ideas on a key tenet of the book which is that “Before we can become fully functioning emotional, rational, linguistic, cultural, social, or political animals, human beings first become musical animals.” From here we explore the questions posed in the book. “What does the frame, frame?” What is meant by “Music is never the creation of an individual in isolation… there is no such thing as private music”, “What is the process of human musicalization”, “What happens to us when the rhythm changes?”

This was a rich discussion and each author sharpened my thinking. One of the more meaningful exchanges came around my reaction to this line in the book, "the analytic frame may be usable as rhythm from the get-go; the analyst drops the beat, and the dance begins." In my reading I disagreed sharply. It is the patient who comes in an drops the beat! Peter's clarifying response to me may be the highlight of many highlights in this enchanting jam session of an interview.

Near the end of our discussion in which the vicissitudes of induction as enchantment have made repeated appearances, I quote a passage that synthesizes much of the previous 90 minutes and speaks to the emotional resonance of the book.

“There is a good reason why psychoanalysis has been ambivalent about, if not terrified, of enchantment, which is that it’s overwhelmingly powerful and potentially extremely hazardous. Why? Because at bottom the human being seeks and needs induction. We are thus radically suggestible and susceptible to influence and in-form-ation (and possibly ex-form-ation) by the environment, a “dethroning of the ego” that Freud could never accept. Our need for enchantment renders us essentially and permanently vulnerable to being taken over, and the crucial distinction between whether we are malevolently exploited or benevolently induced into culture is harrowingly historical, a matter of what world into which one is born.” (p.70)

Christopher Russell, LP is a psychoanalyst in Chelsea, Manhattan.

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Nancy McWilliams, "Psychoanalytic Supervision" (Guilford Publications, 2021) Sep 20, 2023

Drawing on deep reserves of experience and theoretical and research knowledge, Nancy McWilliams presents a fresh perspective on psychodynamic supervision in this highly instructive work. In Psychoanalytic Supervision (Guilford Publications, 2021), McWilliams examines the role of the supervisor in developing the therapist's clinical skills, giving support, helping to formulate and monitor treatment goals, and providing input on ethical dilemmas. Filled with candid clinical examples, the book addresses both individual and group supervision. Special attention is given to navigating personality dynamics, power imbalances, and various dimensions of diversity in the supervisory dyad. McWilliams guides mentors and mentees alike to optimize this unique relationship as a resource for lifelong professional learning and growth.

Jacob Goldberg is a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology at Duquesne University. He can be reached at goldbergj1@duq.edu.

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A Better Way to Buy Books Sep 12, 2023

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communities.

Andy Hunter is CEO and Founder of Bookshop.org. He also co-created Literary Hub.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

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James Newlin and James W. Stone, "New Psychoanalytic Readings of Shakespeare: Cool Reason and Seething Brains" (Routledge, 2023) Sep 06, 2023

Dr. Richard Waugaman is an emeritus supervising and training analyst at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. He is also a well-respected author.

With regard to his career he has said, “I have practiced clinical psychoanalysis for over 40 years. Initially, my publications were mostly on psychoanalysis.”

In 2002, he made a discovery when he learned that the traditional theory about who wrote Shakespeare is faith-based, not evidence-based. As he plunged deeply into primary research on this exciting topic, he learned that the Geneva Bible owned by the Earl of Oxford, now at the Folger Shakespeare Library, has marginalia and under-linings that Roger Stritmatter shows correspond closely with biblical echoes in Shakespeare. He then researched the Whole Book of Psalms and discovered it was the largest Psalms literary source for Shakespeare. He has also published evidence that many other Elizabethan works were also written by the Earl of Oxford anonymously, using pen names, or allonyms.

Now he has contributed to a new book that was recently published by Routledge entitled New Psychoanalytic Readings of Shakespeare. Cool Reasons and Seething Brains(Routledge, 2023). The title of his chapter is “What Shakespeare Teaches Us about Psychological Complexity.”

Karyne Messina is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis and am on the medical staff of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. She is the author of Resurgence of Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy (Routledge, 2022).

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Johanna Dobrich, "Working with Survivor Siblings in Psychoanalysis: Ability and Disability in Clinical Process" (Routledge, 2021) Sep 05, 2023

Johanna Dobrich, author of Working with Survivor Siblings in Psychoanalysis: Ability and Disability in Clinical Process(Routledge, 2021), is the recipient of the 2023 Sandor Ferenczi Award. The award is given for the best published work in the realm of psychoanalysis related to trauma and dissociation in adults and/or children. Survivor Siblings in Psychoanalysis: (Ability and Disability in Clinical Process is the first book to address the topic of relational trauma within the families of a child with severe disabilities.

Working with Survivor Siblings in Psychoanalysis: Ability and Disability in Clinical Process explores a previously neglected area in the field of psychoanalysis, addressing undertheorized concepts on siblings, disabilities, and psychic survivorship, and broadening our conceptualization of the enduring effects of lateral relations on human development.

What happens to a person’s sense of self both personally and professionally when they grow up alongside a severely disabled sibling? Through a series of qualitative interviews held between the author and a sample of psychoanalysts, this book examines both the unconscious experience and the interpersonal field of survivor siblings. Through a trauma-informed contemporary psychoanalytic lens, Dobrich combines data analysis, theory-building, memoir, and clinical storytelling to explore and explicate the impact of lateral survivorship on the clinical moment, making room for a contemporary and nuanced appreciation of siblings in psychoanalysis.

Working with Survivor Siblings in Psychoanalysis: Ability and Disability in Clinical Process will be of immense interest and value to psychoanalysts and other mental health professionals, and for all therapists who work with and treat patients that are themselves survivor siblings. Uniquely integrating both academic and memoir writing, this book will also engage those building theory around the implications of the analyst’s subjectivity on clinical processes.

Johanna Dobrich is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Psychoanalyst with a private practice in New York City that specializes in the treatment of dissociative disorders, among other conditions. Johanna has a master’s degree in political science from Rutgers University and an MSW from New York University. Johanna teaches courses in relational psychoanalysis and its intersection with traumatology and supervises post-graduate psychoanalytic candidates-in-training at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy and at the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center. Johanna enjoys writing, supervising, engaging and coming together with those who share an interest in understanding the complexities, joys and pains of human connection and expression.

Judith Tanen, MA LP CANDIDATE. Email: judithtanen@gmail.com

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Alexander Stille, "The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune" (FSG, 2023) Sep 04, 2023

In the middle of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s, the birth control pill was introduced and a maverick psychoanalytic institute, the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, opened its doors in New York City. Its founders, Saul Newton and Jane Pearce, wanted to start a revolution, one grounded in ideals of creative expression, sexual liberation, and freedom from the expectations of society, and the revolution, they felt, needed to begin at home. Dismantling the nuclear family—and monogamous marriage—would free people from the repressive forces of their parents. In its first two decades, the movement attracted many brilliant, creative people as patients: the painter Jackson Pollock and a swarm of other abstract expressionist artists, the famed art critic Clement Greenberg, the singer Judy Collins, and the dancer Lucinda Childs. In the 1960s, the group evolved into an urban commune of three or four hundred people, with patients living with other patients, leading creative, polyamorous lives. But by the mid-1970s, under the leadership of Saul Newton, the Institute had devolved from a radical communal experiment into an insular cult, with therapists controlling virtually every aspect of their patients’ lives, from where they lived and the work they did to how often they saw their sexual partners and their children.

Although the group was highly secretive during its lifetime and even after its dissolution in 1991, the noted journalist Alexander Stille has succeeded in reconstructing the inner life of a parallel world hidden in plain sight in the middle of Manhattan. Through countless interviews and personal papers, The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune (FSG, 2023) reveals the nearly unbelievable story of a fallen utopia.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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B. D'Amato, "Triskele: A Novel" (Atmosphere Press, 2023) Aug 21, 2023

In the unconscious, coincidence does not exist.

A bizarre tragedy drives ten-year-old Paul from his dysfunctional home, leaving his younger sister, Bethany, behind. Paul flees to his estranged father’s apple orchard where he discovers comfort and parenting for the first time. Two decades later, the long-lost siblings settle separately in NYC where a gifted psychoanalyst, Lillian, develops independent relationships with them as all three characters search for seemingly unattainable connection while carrying inescapable demons.

In Triskele (Atmosphere Press, 2023) by B. D’Amato, we experience a psychological story that takes us through generations to the research and art departments, galleries and art lecture halls of distinguished Franklin University; an idyllic upstate farm; heart-wrenching therapy sessions; a seminary and the raunchy crime and drug infested NYC streets during the early 1980’s. A kaleidoscope of settings provide symbolic backdrops for the complex, human desires of individuals struggling for emotional wholeness. The story explores the irrational behaviors people embrace and the apparently antithetical, yet underlying motives, for their actions. Rich dream material furnishes complexity and deepens perspective into the conflicts of each character’s internal world, all the while asking: where do we find grace?

B. D’Amato is a psychoanalyst in private practice in NYC. She has written numerous professional papers analyzing the psychic conflicts of literary characters and their authors, i.e., Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, R L Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Her most recent publication considers the lyrics in Bob Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul” from a hypnogogic (hip·nuh·gaa·juhk) perspective. She has written extensively about dreams, adoption, and the curative potential of human interconnection through emotional communication. Triskele is her first work of fiction. bdamato.com

Lexa Roséan is a psychoanalyst practicing in NYC. Lexa is on faculty at the Center for Modern Psychoanalysis (CMPS). She also dances and teaches Argentine tango.

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Mary Edwards, "Sartre’s Existential Psychoanalysis: Knowing Others" (Bloomsbury, 2022) Aug 19, 2023

Thinking of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, it is hard to think of him without imagining him in very particular contexts. One will likely imagine him in a Parisian cafe working through a pack of cigarettes and coffee, working on his latest play while waiting for his friend Pierre to arrive. His theories of freedom against the temptations of bad faith are thought to be theories of writers and activists, resisters of occupation. But while this is no doubt a central part of his thinking, it misses another context he was very much interested in: the clinic. While he was not an orthodox Freudian or trained analyst, he was deeply interested in many of the questions that psychoanalysts are also interested in, and this intersection proved to be very productive, generating thousands of pages of lesser known works.

This is what Mary Edwards, philosophy lecturer at Cardiff University, has written about in her new book Sartre’s Existential Psychoanalysis: Knowing Others(Bloomsbury, 2022). Working through Sartre’s output from beginning to end, it first sets the stage with his early claims about the nature of the self and the possibility of knowing a person. From there, it works to his later works, in particular his voluminous yet unfinished biography of Gustave Flaubert, where Edwards finds Sartre developing and applying a very particular method of understanding a person while nonetheless maintaining a respect for their free nature. While Sartre never completed his intended project, Edwards finds his attempt suggestive for rethinking life both in and beyond the clinic.

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Michael J. Diamond, "Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times" (Phoenix Publishing, 2022) Aug 11, 2023

Michael J. Diamond's book Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times(Phoenix Publishing, 2022) describes Trumpism: the strong allegiance to former President Donald Trump that is in evidence among a sizable portion of the US population. How did Trump come to be elected in 2016, and who supported him during his presidential tenure - and why? How is it that he continues to hold cult-like status, exerting a strong influence not only on many individuals but also on numerous elected officials, despite his defeat in 2020? Why does his character continue to be an object of fascination even among anti-Trumpists, and why will Trumpism continue to play a major role in the American sociopolitical landscape even now he has left the presidential stage?

Diamond ponders these questions through the lenses of American history and culture, political theory, social phenomena, group dynamics, and psychoanalysis. In exploring the relationship between large-group regression, cultism, destructive populism, delusional thinking, conspiratorial beliefs, authoritarianism, and leadership characterised by narcissism and paranoia, psychoanalytic ideas pertaining to group dynamics, malignant regression, and leadership are brought into play. Prominent psychoanalytic thinkers who have addressed these topics and whose work usefully contributes to the discussion include Bion, Freud, Fromm, Bollas, Kernberg, Lifton, Rosenfeld, and Volkan, as well as Bleger, Jaques, and several more recent Kleinian/Bionian-influenced analysts.

Most important, the book makes use of these understandings to reestablish a sufficiently containing frame that strengthens the body politics' nonpathological elements in order to come to grips with these disturbing factors. Whatever their political beliefs, psychoanalysts in the US and worldwide will find much to think about in reading this book's application of their discipline to today's sociopolitical environment. In addition, the book's insights extend beyond arguments targeting a strictly psychoanalytic audience in order to reach social and political thinkers, as well as activists, who are deeply concerned about dangers threatening the very foundations of democracy in the US and worldwide. And finally, the thoughtful lay person will appreciate the accessibility to all these fields that the book provides, and will come away with a much deeper understanding of just what motivates us to take a stand for or against a given political figure. In short, conceptual tools are provided that lead to greater understanding as well as effective strategies and tactics for containment of destructive forces - largely unconscious ones - that imperil our society.

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Petra Bueskens, "Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract" (Routledge, 2018) Jul 27, 2023

Why do women in contemporary western societies experience contradiction between their autonomous and maternal selves? What are the origins of this contradiction and the associated ‘double shift’ that result in widespread calls to either ‘lean in’ or ‘opt out’? How are some mothers subverting these contradictions and finding meaningful ways of reconciling their autonomous and maternal selves?

In Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract (Routledge, 2018), Petra Bueskens argues that western modernisation consigned women to the home and released them from it in historically unprecedented, yet interconnected, ways. Her ground-breaking formulation is that western women are free as ‘individuals’ and constrained as mothers, with the twist that it is the former that produces the latter.

Bueskens’ theoretical contribution consists of the identification and analysis of modern women’s duality, drawing on political philosophy, feminist theory and sociology tracking the changing nature of discourses of women, freedom and motherhood across three centuries. While the current literature points to the pervasiveness of contradiction and double-shifts for mothers, very little attention has been paid to how (some) women are subverting contradiction and ‘rewriting the sexual contract’. Bridging this gap, Bueskens’ interviews ten ‘revolving mothers’ to reveal how periodic absence, exceeding the standard work-day, disrupts the default position assigned to mothers in the home, and in turn disrupts the gendered dynamics of household work.

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Lee Grossman, "The Psychoanalytic Encounter and the Misuse of Theory" (Routledge, 2022) Jul 10, 2023

InThe Psychoanalytic Encounter and the Misuse of Theory(Routledge, 2022), Lee Grossman addresses the disjuncture between analytic literature and clinical work in an effort to render analytic theorizing more representative of clinical experience.

Pointing out the ways in which analytic literature can fail to capture the intensity of feeling and the stumbling, lurching, working in the dark that captures much of clinical engagement, Grossman shows how incomprehensibility is sometimes mistaken for wisdom. As an alternative, Grossman shows how attention to what he calls the syntax of thought can naturally define three different broad categories of life experience: the omnipotence of the neurotic, the wishful, short-sighted thinking of the perverse, and the concrete, disordered thinking of the psychotic. Using rich clinical material, interspersed with detailed exposition and artful satire, Grossman departs from conventional theoretical writing to provide new ways of conceptualizing analytic therapy.

Addressing analytic therapy as an encounter between two people, both governed by forces about which they know very little, this book provides essential insights for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and other clinical practitioners both in training and in practice.

Jacob Goldberg is an incoming Ph.D. student in clinical psychology at Duquesne University. He can be reached at goldbergj1@duq.edu.

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Kevin Volkan and Vamik Volkan, "Schizophrenia: Science, Psychoanalysis, and Culture" (Phoenix Publishing House, 2022) Jun 29, 2023

In Schizophrenia: Science, Psychoanalysis, and Culture (Phoenix Publishing House, 2022), Kevin Volkan and Vamık Volkan present a comprehensive study of schizophrenia using a psychoanalytic lens on the existing interdisciplinary research. Over the last seventy years, mainstream research on the causes, prevalence, and treatment of schizophrenia has greatly diverged from psychoanalytic thinking. However, the emergence of the field of neuro-psychoanalysis brings hope that psychoanalytic metapsychology and clinical theory may once again provide valuable insight into understanding schizophrenia.

Psychoanalytic treatment may not be appropriate for many sufferers but psychoanalysis does provide insight to inform and improve treatment. It can also illuminate what aspects of schizophrenia are common across cultures, where they present unique characteristics, and just how cultural variations occur. For any future improvement in understanding and treating schizophrenia, the cultural underpinnings and expressions of schizophrenic illness need to be made clear.

For clinicians in the field, the authors’ aim is to deepen insight and promote the use of psychotherapy and integrated treatments, while increasing sensitivity to cultural variations in schizophrenic disease. Accordingly, this book is divided into four sections. The first gives a brief overview and outline of the mainstream understanding of schizophrenia. The second drills down to focus on general psychoanalytic ideas about schizophrenia, culminating with a focus on problems with early object relations. The third looks at how psychoanalytic treatment can be successful in some cases. The fourth and final part discusses how views of the disorder and the disorder itself are affected by culture.

The authors hope to generate insight and understanding of schizophrenic disorders which could lead to new approaches to treating and possibly preventing schizophrenia. It is a must-read for all clinicians and trainees working in the field and presents interesting ideas to anyone with an interest in the subject.

Karyne Messina is a psychologist and a psychoanalyst with the Baltimore Washington Center for Psychoanalysis. She is on the medical staff at Suburban Hospital of Johns Hopkins Hospital. She is author of Resurgence of Global Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy

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Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini, "Gender Without Identity" (Unconscious in Translation, 2023) Jun 27, 2023

In this episode, JJ Mull discusses Gender Without Identity (Unconscious in Translation, 2023) with co-authors Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini. Weaving together a variety of influences -- ranging from the metapsychology of Jean Laplanche to trans of color critique and queer theory -- Gender Without Identity formulates a theory of gender formation adequate to the radical complexity of trans and queer subjects. Pushing up against static notions of “core gender identity,” Saketopoulou and Pellegrini argue for the ethical urgency of recognizing that gender emerges from complex processes of “self-theorization.” This brave new work invites radical new ways for working with gender diversity psychoanalytically.

J.J. Mull is a poet, training clinician, and fellow in the Program for Psychotherapy at Cambridge Health Alliance. Originally from the west coast, he currently lives and bikes in Somerville, MA. He can be reached at: jay.c.mull@gmail.com.

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Robert Falconer, "The Others Within Us: Internal Family Systems, Porous Mind, and Spirit Possession" (Great Mystery Press, 2023) Jun 23, 2023

Today I interview Bob Falconer about his new book, The Others Within Us: Internal Family Systems, Porous Mind, and Spirit Possession (Great Mystery Press, 2023). Falconer’s book is the result of a decade-long journey to understand a phenomenon that raises questions not only about how we, as a contemporary Western culture, understand ourselves. It’s also a challenge to the limits of how we understand—the models of self and mind that we assume to be true. In The Others Within Us, Falconer offers a paradigm-shifting vision of what it means to be human and how therapists who work within the model of Internal Family Systems can help to relieve human suffering. Falconer offers both a methodology for therapists as well as an intellectual and transcultural history of the farther reaches of our inner worlds. Falconer himself is a long-time practitioner and trainer of Internal Family Systems (or IFS) and has previously co-written a book with the founder of the IFS model, Richard Schwartz, entitled Many Minds, One Self. Enjoy my conversation with Bob Falconer.

Show notes:

* Interview with Richard Schwartz

* Interview with Tanya Luhrmann

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The Environmental Unconscious Jun 20, 2023

Steven Swarbrick talks about poetic engagement with nature in the work of early modern poets Edmund Spenser, Walter Ralegh, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton. Here language is influenced not by the manifest and the conscious, but the unconscious or void, as understood in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. This work is the basis for his hope for a reorganization of thought in contemporary ecocriticism around a politics of degrowth instead of additive policies that serve to greenwash capitalist economies.

Steven Swarbrick is an assistant professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York. His research interests include early modern literature, contemporary continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, the environmental humanities, and sexuality and film studies. He is the author of The Environmental Unconscious: Ecological Poetics from Spenser to Milton (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) and co-author, with Jean-Thomas Tremblay, of Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction (Northwestern University Press, under contract). He is currently working on two books: Unknowing Sex: Shakespeare against the Historicists and Destituent Ecology: Libidinal Politics for the Environmental Left.

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Anna Fishzon and Emma Lieber, "The Queerness of Childhood: Essays from the Other Side of the Looking Glass" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) Jun 03, 2023

In this interview, Anna Fishzon, co editor with Emma Lieber on The Queerness of Childhood: Essays from the Other Side of the Looking Glass (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), discusses her thinking about temporality, queer theory, psychoanalysis and childhood with Tracy Morgan who concomitantly calls time on her own work with the podcast. Together these two friends and colleagues and former hosts, laugh, maybe choke up a bit, reminisce and riff. Morgan, in a first in her over thirteen years as host and founding editor of the channel, ends the interview and her work with NBiP, with a song.

About the book:

This book represents a meeting of queer theorists and psychoanalysts around the figure of the child. Its intention is not only to interrogate the discursive work performed on, and by, the child in these fields, but also to provide a stage for examining how psychoanalysis and queer theory themselves interact, with the understanding that the meeting of these discourses is most generative around the queer time and sexualities of childhood. From the theoretical perspectives of queer theory, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and gender studies, the chapters explore cultural, aesthetic, and historical forms and phenomena that are aimed at, or are about, children, and that give expression to and make room for the queerness of childhood.

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Michaela Chamberlain, "Misogyny in Psychoanalysis" (Phoenix Publishing House, 2022) May 27, 2023

Today I talked to Michaela Chamberlain, author of Misogyny in Psychoanalysis (Phoenix Publishing House, 2022)

Chamberlain’s book is a product of “cumulative trauma” whose original starting point was an interest in in menstruation where, in psychoanalytic literature filled with papers on “micturition and feces”, there is a “startling lack of writing on the monthly passing of menstrual blood.” Chamberlain realized that this absence was a symptom of something bigger. That something is misogyny.

Working with a definition attributed to Kate Manne[1] misogyny is seen as “the law enforcement branch of sexism” and Chamberlain argues that we really have “to grapple with the law enforcement of the male gaze. The minute you free yourself from this or at least know what you’re fighting it means you can think all sorts of things. The more we straightjacket ourselves with the laws of Freud the more we are lessening the possibilities for creativity, which surely has to be the point of psychoanalysis.”

“We need to take on the trauma that’s been caused by past analytic gods and really examine the continued use of psychoanalytic terms owned by a man to apply a man-made theory to women” and a discipline that has historically had “no trust in women to adequately understand their own experience.” Chamberlain references her training where the phrase “Bowlby said” was a way to remind her “to pay respect to her male elders and keep to my place. The analyst expected me to swallow the comment as truth in much the same was as Freud quotes are given to remind everyone of the rules of play.”

After reviewing the foundations of psychoanalysis and the continued reification of the clearly misogynistic Oedipus complex, Chamberlain turns her focus to how this misogyny gets played out in the clinical setting. Chapter 4 “The misogynistic introject – a case study” is a painful story of a mother whose insight into the struggles of her child are rapidly dismissed “because she is the mother”.

In this interview, recorded in May of 2023, Chamberlain observes that psychoanalytic institutes have yet to engage with the public protests around misogyny, the Women's Safety Movement, #MeToo, and #ReclaimTheseStreets. Whereas the Black Lives Matter movement has finally entered psychoanalytic institutes in the form of trainings, conferences, supervisions, and groups aimed at confronting legacies of racism in psychoanalysis no such movement has occurred with regards to misogyny following the horrific murder of Sarah Everard at the hands of a police officer in 2021 when the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, stated that “London streets are not safe for women or girls” and 50% of UK women reported they did not feel safe leaving their homes after dark.

Misogyny in Psychoanalysis argues that women’s experience in psychoanalysis has been “negatively hallucinated” and that “What is needed for psychoanalysis to take the brave first step of putting itself on the couch to grapple fully with its unconscious fantasies about women and begin coping with what it working hard not to see.”

[1] Manne, K. (2018). Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Christopher Russell, LP is a psychoanalyst in Chelsea, Manhattan.

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Beatriz Dujovne, "'Don't Be Sad When I'm Gone': A Memoir of Loss and Healing in Buenos Aires" (Toplight Books, 2020) May 26, 2023

The monumental sense of dislocation we experience after losing a loved one can be life-altering. There is no script for grieving–each individual passes through their own phases of mourning. In Don't Be Sad When I'm Gone': A Memoir of Loss and Healing in Buenos Aires (Toplight Books, 2020), psychologist Beatriz Dujovne documents how she grieved the loss of her husband and sought therapy during an extended stay in her hometown of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Recounting her healing process day-to-day, from shock through recovery, this book traces her navigation of the uncertainty and devastation that often engulfs those who have suffered profound loss. A profound read!

Lexa Rosean is a licensed psychoanalyst with private practice in New York City. I am a graduate of New York Graduate School of Psychoanalysis (NYGSP) and Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (CMPS).

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Pharmacological Histories Ep. 3: Bita Moghaddam on Ketamine May 12, 2023

In this episode, Bita Moghaddam discusses the emergence of ketamine as a combat anesthetic in the Vietnam war, its transformation into a recreation drug central to club culture, and its current transition into a treatment for depression.

Ketamine, approved in 2019 by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of depression, has been touted by scientists and media reports as something approaching a miracle cure. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series chronicles the ascent of a drug that has been around for fifty years--in previous incarnations, a Vietnam-era combat anesthetic and a popular club drug--that has now been reinvented as a treatment for depression. Bita Moghaddam, a leading researcher in neuropharmacology, explains the scientific history and the biology of ketamine, its clinical use, and its recently discovered antidepressant effects, for the nonspecialist reader.

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Ami Harbin, "Fearing Together: Ethics for Insecurity" (Oxford UP, 2023) May 07, 2023

In Fearing Together: Ethics for Insecurity(Oxford UP, 2023), Ami Harbin explores how fearing is a central part of how we relate to each other and the unpredictable world. Fearing badly is a key part of many of our moral failures, and fearing better a central part of our moral repair.

We might think that fearing is undesirable and should be avoided whenever possible. In fact, Fearing Together shows that the avoidance of fear causes some of our greatest threats. This book brings together philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and psychoanalysis to help us understand fear as a relational practice so that we can see that our relationships with other fearers shape what we fear, what fear feels like, how we identify and understand our fears, and how we cope with them.

Growing as moral agents involves coming to grips with what kinds of fearers we want to be and become, and with what we owe each other when facing what we cannot control. At the heart of this book are the moral quandaries and complexities of relational fearing: the ethics of fearing together.

Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

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William J. Doherty, "The Ethical Lives of Clients: Transcending Self-Interest in Psychotherapy" (APA, 2021) Apr 12, 2023

Clients often seek therapists’ input for dealing with ethical dilemmas in their lives, but there is little guidance for therapists in how to do this. The Ethical Lives of Clients: Transcending Self-Interest in Psychotherapy (APA, 2021) shows therapists how to serve as ethical consultants who help clients balance their personal needs with their sense of responsibility to others.

Dr. Bill Doherty blends decades of clinical experience with personal and philosophical insights to frame the skills and knowledge therapists need to act as ethical guides while respecting client autonomy. He calls for a shift from psychotherapy’s individualistic focus towards a more relational one that includes ethical connections to others.

Doherty presents the LEAP‑C model, a framework for ethical consulting that utilizes the traditional therapeutic skills of listening, exploring, affirming, and offering perspective, while also challenging clients to recognize ethical issues they don't perceive.

Using detailed case examples, Doherty provides a roadmap for addressing common client dilemmas, such as keeping and ending commitments, having affairs, lying, and deceiving, and causing psychological or physical harm to others. He also provides guidelines for citizen therapists to lend their expertise to help solve larger societal concerns, such as political polarization and police–community relations.

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Todd McGowan, "Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets" (Columbia UP, 2016) Mar 23, 2023

If you have ever gotten excited over buying a new object only to feel let down once you acquire it, then today’s discussion will be relevant to you. My guest is Todd McGowan, author of the book Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets (2016, Columbia University Press). We discuss his critique of capitalism as a system that encourages us to forever chase satisfactions that never come. And we explore his suggestion that true satisfaction lies in the wanting, not the acquiring. It’s a fascinating conversation that will radically change the way you approach everyday consumption and how you think about your own satisfaction.

Todd McGowan is professor of film studies at the University of Vermont. He is the author of several other books, including Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis (2013, University of Nebraska Press), Only a Joke Can Save Us: A Theory of Comedy (2017, Northwestern University Press), and Universality and Identity Politics (2020, Columbia University Press). He is also co-host, along with Ryan Engley, of the podcast Why Theory.

Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute in Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology in New York City and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group; and faculty at Florida Psychoanalytic Institute in Miami. He is a contributing author to the books Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (2018, Routledge) and Patriarchy and its Discontents: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (2023, Routledge) and has published on issues of gender, sexuality, and sexual abuse.

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Nilofer Kaul, "Plato's Ghost: Liminality and Psychoanalysis" (Phoenix Publishing House, 2021) Mar 16, 2023

Psychoanalytic encounters are filled with the unknowability of two unconscious minds meeting. Here one may forge a link that enables the process of meaning-making, or else it can become the space for destruction, perversion, evacuation, regression, and stasis. The area that lies between the mind of the analyst and that of the analysand is thus the liminal area of psychoanalysis - of growth, change, turbulence, as well as that of impasse, bastion, and failure. This latter could be what Bion meant by minus links. It seems that the primitive part of the mind is always looking for ways to evade psychic pain and emotional truth is always in peril. Analytic links are always fraught with danger. Minus links share with each other the quality of evading truth and therefore inhibiting emotional growth and the capacity to give meaning to experiences. Blind spots may be enabled by analytic allegiance to our particular schools, our inability to forge a technique in the face of the protomental apparatus which can breed arrogance, the complacencies of language, gaps between our theoretical allegiance and our technique, and, finally, all too often, our unwillingness and inability to get in touch with our true experience. Would it help to chronicle our quotidian failures?

In these liminal moments, the links between analyst and analysand slide away from the emotional truth, rather than towards it. In Plato's Ghost: Liminality and Psychoanalysis (Phoenix Publishing House, 2021), Nilofer Kaul presents these moments and explores the complex reasons behind them in a stunning debut work that questions the heart of analytic practice.

Ashis Roy is a psychoanalyst practicing in Delhi.

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Tzachi Slonim, ed., "Richard M. Billow's Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis and Group Process" (Routledge, 2021) Mar 13, 2023

On this episode, J.J. Mull speaks with Richard Billow and Tzachi Slonim about Richard M. Billow’s Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis and Group Process: Changing Our Minds(Routledge, 2021). This volume presents Billow’s unique contributions to the theory and technique of psychoanalytic group therapy, along with introductions and explications by Slonim, the volume’s editor. Weaving together various theoretical traditions and thinkers (Bion, Laplanche, the relational school, etc.), Billow extends and complicates what we ordinarily think of as constituting the “relational” in psychodynamic group work. In addition to these theoretical contributions, what remains most alive in the book is its fidelity to clinical experience. Throughout the book, vivid clinical vignettes give us a window into the dynamic, unfolding process of a clinician at work.

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Carl H. Shubs, "Traumatic Experiences of Normal Development: An Intersubjective, Object Relations Listening Perspective on Self, Attachment, Trauma, and Reality" (Routledge, 2020) Mar 04, 2023

Traditionally, trauma has been defined as negatively impacting external events, with resulting damage. This book puts forth an entirely different thesis: trauma is universal, occurring under even the best of circumstances and unavoidably sculpting the very building blocks of character structure.

In Traumatic Experiences of Normal Development: An Intersubjective, Object Relations Listening Perspective on Self, Attachment, Trauma, and Reality(Routledge, 2020), Dr. Carl Shubs depathologizes the experience of trauma by presenting a listening perspective which helps recognize the presence and effects of traumatic experiences of normal development (TEND) by using a reconstruction of object relations theory. This outlook redefines trauma as the breach in intrapsychic organization of Self, Affect, and Other (SAO), the three components of object relations units, which combine to form intricate and changeable constellations that are no less than the total experience of living in any given moment. Bridging the gap between the trauma and analytic communities, as well as integrating intrapsychic and relational frameworks, the SAO/ TEND perspective provides a trauma-based band of attunement for attending to all relational encounters including those occurring in therapy.

Though targeted to mental health professionals, this book will help enable therapists and sophisticated lay readers alike to recognize the impact of relational encounters, providing new tools to understand the traumas we have experienced and to minimize the hold they have on us.

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Karyne E. Messina, "Resurgence of Global Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame-Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy" (Routledge, 2022) Jan 21, 2023

Resurgence of Global Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame-Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy(Routledge, 2022) provides a psychoanalytic perspective to the global implications of the populist movement in the U.S. and its relationship to other parts of the world, particularly focusing on the presidency and legacy of Donald Trump.

The book explores Trump's use of psychological form of manipulation known as projective identification and how his use of this defense mechanism has influenced global institutions, political discourse, and quality of life in the long term. Messina explores the correlation between Trump's rhetoric and an increase in reported racism and prejudiced violence worldwide, disintegration of global values, and a radicalized political climate. She analyzes the dynamics between Trump and his supporters, political opponents, and successors, considers the COVID-19 pandemic as a study of Trump's views of the world, and considers the roles of social and television media. The book concludes with an explanation of antidotes to projective identification, including thoughtful debate and meaningful discussions and scripted dialogues for global healing.

This insightful book will be of interest to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, academics and students of political psychology and political movements, and readers interested in a deeper analysis of populism and political dynamics.

Ashis Roy is a psychoanalyst practicing in Delhi.

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Gila Ashtor, "Exigent Psychoanalysis: The Interventions of Jean Laplanche" (Routledge, 2021) Jan 18, 2023

In Exigent Psychoanalysis: The Interventions of Jean Laplanche(Routledge, 2021), Dr. Gila Ashtor “strives to draw out the discipline’s conceptual underpinnings by putting them in conversation with Laplanche’s comprehensive innovations.” Ashtor engages with “the broadest and most fundamental concerns of psychoanalysis.” What is the nature of psychoanalytic theory? What is the unconscious? What causes mental suffering? Why does psychic life develop?

Acknowledging that while contemporary practitioners may work “flexibly across a range of different schools” they leave fundamental theories of mind “intact”. “What are we clinging to?” Ashtor asks. “The grammar of our discourse is filled with constructions we do not believe anymore yet we cannot bring ourselves to use a language other than the one Freud taught us”.

Laplanche believes we lost sight of the “true revolution” which is that “we revolve around others.” “There’s so much appreciation in Laplanche of the actual other person” Ashtor told me. “The core of Laplanche’s boldness is that when Freud abandons the seduction theory what he really abandoned is that we are impacted by other people. The impact is mediated by fantasy but there are other people there. Laplanche wants both fantasy and real otherness.”

Where has sexuality gone? Our default is to believe that our desires are endogenous. They are not. “The fact that the innocent infant encounters the sexual adult is the reason that the infant grows into an adult with an unconscious. It’s very productive this encounter. This is what’s going to give a child an unconscious.” For Ashtor, contemporary theory needs something that appreciates “the centrality of sexuality and drive even if how we think of drives needs to be reformulated.” We also need to appreciate the “concrete reality of attachment. There needs to be some way that we bring these two together.”

In this interview Dr. Ashtor and I discuss the following questions: What are the needs of the present moment and why is Laplanche suited to meet them? How does Laplanche put psychoanalysis to work to create new foundations for psychoanalysis? How does enlarged sexuality demand a totalizing reversal in how we understand the basic navigation of mental life? What are the differences between Laplanche’s Enlarged Sexuality with seduction and translation and Ferenczi’s Confusion of Tongues with passion and tenderness? What is Laplanche’s notion of how sexuality develops in relation to self-preservation? What is the central claim of affect? Are we implicating mothers again? What is meant by interpretation is on the side of repression, rather than that of the repressed? How does traditional metapsychology falter precisely at the place where a true recognition of others is required?

Ashtor finishes the interview with this observation, “Psychoanalysis is missing a coherent theory of affect. This is one of the biggest problems in psychoanalysis” and leaves us with a question “What would it mean to accept a comprehensive affect theory as a viable replacement of Freud’s dual instinct theory as the primary factor in psychological organization?”

Christopher Russell, LP is a psychoanalyst in Chelsea, Manhattan. He is a member of the faculty and supervising analyst at The Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies and The New York Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. Christopher is a board member with Restaurant After Hours a 501C3 charitable organization committed to mental health advocacy, resources, and support for the hospitality industry.

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Vincenzo Bonaminio, "Playing at Work: Clinical Essays in a Contemporary Winnicottian Perspective on Technique" (Routledge, 2022) Jan 11, 2023

Vincenzo Bonaminio, the Italian psychoanalyst and ambassador to the Winnicottian tradition offers us a clinical feast in his new publication, Playing at Work: Clinical Essays in a Contemporary Winnicottian Perspective on Technique(Routledge, 2022).

At a moment when, as he argues, much writing in the field is driven by theory and theorizing, this book offers a veritable cornucopia of clinical description. Bonaminio shares his errors and his “almost but not quite” moments with patients. As such, he depicts the psychoanalytic quotidian—the bread and butter, the unexceptional, and the boring that make up most of the clinician’s day—and does so with humor and intelligence.

He also shares with us the impact Winnicott has on his thinking in the consulting room and that impact is nothing less than total, from hill to vale. It is interesting to witness what immersion in a way of clinical thinking looks like clinically, and it is hard to discern where DWW begins and Bonaminio ends. It seems he has integrated the entirety of the oeuvre—and not just his more popular ideas like the transitional object, the good enough mother, or hate in the countertransference—yet his own idiom shines through. And in this interview—conducted a bit in Italian and mostly in English—he shows us his way of being with patients as he tells us stories about the people who frequent his office.

He challenges us to rethink the notion of confidentiality as well. When you read his cases you can sense that he is not altering identifying details about his patients and so there is a believability at the heart of what he is sharing. Bonaminio takes responsibility for doing as such and shoulders the risk for his rendering of a case, seeing it as reflecting something about himself as an analytic worker. His concern about the paucity of clinical material being presented in the field made me wonder about the impact that functioning in a litigious society, which embraces privacy like a patient embraces his symptom, is having on our thinking, our work, and what we feel free to share with each other?

Tracy Morgan is the founding editor of New Books in Psychoanalysis and a psychoanalyst in private practice in NYC and Rome where she sees individuals, couples and groups. She is also a member of the faculty at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies in NYC.

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Ed Cohen, "On Learning to Heal or, What Medicine Doesn't Know" (Duke UP, 2022) Dec 28, 2022

At thirteen, Ed Cohen was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease—a chronic, incurable condition that nearly killed him in his early twenties. At his diagnosis, his doctors told him that the best he could hope for would be periods of remission. Unfortunately, doctors never mentioned healing as a possibility.

In On Learning to Heal or, What Medicine Doesn't Know(Duke UP, 2022), Cohen draws on fifty years of living with Crohn’s to consider how Western medicine’s turn from an “art of healing” toward a “science of medicine” deeply affects both medical practitioners and their patients. He demonstrates that although medicine can now offer many seemingly miraculous therapies, medicine is not and has never been the only way to enhance healing. Exploring his own path to healing, he argues that learning to heal requires us to desire and value healing as a vital possibility. With this book, Cohen advocates reviving healing’s role for all those whose lives are touched by illness.

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Annie Reiner, "W. R. Bion’s Theories of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction" (Routledge, 2022) Dec 24, 2022

Annie Reiner’s introduction to Wilfred Bion’s theories of mind presents Bion’s intricate ideas in an accessible, original way without compromising their complexity.

Reiner uses comparisons to painting, literature and philosophy, and detailed clinical examples, to provide an experience of Bion’s work that can be felt as well as thought. The book explores many of Bion’s theoretical and clinical innovations, and examines the controversy surrounding his concept of O. Reiner provides evidence of a continuity between Bion’s early ideas and his later, more esoteric work.

W. R. Bion’s Theories of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction(Routledge, 2022) will be essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic candidates, as well as students of psychoanalytic and psychological history, and anyone looking for a readable introduction to Bion’s work.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com.

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Richard Wood, "A Study of Malignant Narcissism: Personal and Professional Insights" (Routledge, 2022) Dec 22, 2022

A Study of Malignant Narcissism: Personal and Professional Insights(Routledge, 2022) offers a unique insight into malignant narcissism, exploring both its personal and professional aspects and constructing a theoretical framework that renders its origins and manifestations more accessible.

With reference to his own family dynamic and to 45 years of professional experience, Richard Wood explores the psychology of malignant narcissism, positing it as a defense against love. The book ﬁrst oﬀers an overview of existing literature before examining relevant clinical material, including an analysis of Wood’s relationships with his own parents. Wood presents vignettes illustrating the core dynamics that drive narcissism, illustrated with sections of his father’s unpublished autobiography and with his patient work. The book makes the case for malignant narcissism to be considered a subtype of psychopathy and puts forth a framework setting out the key dynamics that typify these individuals, including consideration of the ways in which malignant narcissism replicates itself in varied forms. Finally, Wood examines the impact of narcissistic leadership and compares his theoretical position with those of other clinicians.

This book will be of interest to clinical psychologists, psychoanalysts, and psychotherapists, as well as all professionals working with narcissistic patients.

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Avgi Saketopoulou, "Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia" (NYU Press, 2023) Dec 13, 2022

Arguing that we have become culturally obsessed with healing trauma, Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia (NYU Press, 2023) calls attention to what traumatized subjects do with their pain. The erotics of racism offers a paradigmatic example of how what is proximal to violation may become an unexpected site of flourishing. Central to the transformational possibilities of trauma is a queer form of consent, limit consent, that is not about guarding the self but about risking experience. Saketopoulou thereby shows why sexualities beyond consent may be worth risking-and how risk can solicit the future.

Moving between clinical and cultural case studies, Saketopoulou takes up theatrical and cinematic works such as Slave Play and The Night Porter, to chart how trauma and sexuality join forces to surge through the aesthetic domain. Putting the psychoanalytic theory of Jean Laplanche in conversation with queer of color critique, performance studies, and philosophy, Sexuality Beyond Consent proposes that enduring the strange in ourselves, not to master trauma but to rub up against it, can open us up to encounters with opacity. The book concludes by theorizing currents of sadism that, when pursued ethically, can animate unique forms of interpersonal and social care.

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Austin Ratner, "The Psychoanalyst's Aversion to Proof" (Ipbooks, 2018) Dec 12, 2022

A clear and engaging call-to-arms to Freudians everywhere and a fresh diagnosis of the major problem confronting psychoanalysis today, Austin Ratner's book The Psychoanalyst's Aversion to Proof(Ipbooks, 2018) presents exciting new ideas that could help psychoanalysis reclaim its eminent place among the mental sciences. By showing how and why Freudians have avoided proving their theories, The Psychoanalyst’s Aversion to Proof charts a new future of growth and engagement in which psychoanalysis fulfills its promise: to rescue humanity from its own irrationality.

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On Sigmund Freud's "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" Nov 18, 2022

Sigmund Freud is probably best known as the founder of psychoanalysis. In his clinical practice, he established theories on how the human psyche develops and behaves, and his 1905 text Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality is an analysis of humans’ relationship to sex. At the time, doctors and researchers were curious how “non-normative” sexualities and genders developed. Instead of looking for biological or hereditary traits, Freud looked at the development of the human psyche, eventually questioning our relationship to notions of normativity and perversion. His questions laid a foundation for the later development of queer theory. George Paul Meiu is an associate professor of anthropology and African American studies at Harvard University. He is the author of Ethno-erotic Economies: Sexuality, Money, and Belonging in Kenya and the upcoming book Queer Objects: Intimacy, Citizenship, and Rescue in Kenya. See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow us on Twitter @WritLargePod.

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Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, "Hatred of Sex" (U Nebraska Press, 2022) Nov 17, 2022

Hatred of Sex(U Nebraska Press, 2022) links Jacques Rancière’s political philosophy of the constitutive disorder of democracy with Jean Laplanche’s identification of a fundamental perturbation at the heart of human sexuality. Sex is hated as well as desired, Oliver Davis and Tim Dean contend, because sexual intensity impedes coherent selfhood and undermines identity, rendering us all a little more deplorable than we might wish. Davis and Dean explore the consequences of this conflicted dynamic across a range of fields and institutions, including queer studies, attachment theory, the #MeToo movement, and “traumatology,” demonstrating how hatred of sex has been optimized and exploited by neoliberalism. Advancing strong claims about sex, pleasure, power, intersectionality, therapy, and governance, Davis and Dean shed new light on enduring questions of equality at a historical moment when democracy appears ever more precarious.

Matthew Pieknik is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City.

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Željka Matijasević, "The Borderline Culture: Intensity, Jouissance, and Death" (Lexington, 2021) Nov 07, 2022

Borderline personality disorder is no longer a secret. Many people who are not therapists know what it is and see it as a fitting description for their personal experience. But what does it mean for someone to be “borderline”? Is it something one is or that one has? Perhaps most importantly, where does it come from? The prevailing view in psychological circles has long been that it stems from traumatic experiences and problematic internal psychological patterns. But is it possible that society actually makes certain people “borderline?”

These and other questions are taken up in my interview with Željka Matijašević, author of the new book The Borderline Culture: Intensity, Jouissance, and Death (2021, Rowman & Littlefield). She advances a compelling argument that perhaps our fast-paced, capitalist society bears some responsibility for the creation of borderline states, with its proclivity towards intensity and promotion of insatiable consumption, both features with striking resemblance to borderline states. This interview is for anyone wanting to better understand the borderline phenomenon.

Željka Matijašević is full professor of comparative literature at the Department of Comparative Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She holds and MPhil and Ph.D. in psychoanalytic studies from the University of Cambridge, UK. Her prior books include Lacan: The Persistence of the Dialectics (2005); Structuring the Unconscious: Freud and Lacan (2006); An Introduction to Psychoanalysis: Oedipus, Hamlet, Jekyll/Hyde (2011); The Century of the Fragile Self: Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society (2016); and Drama, Drama (2020). She is a member of La Fondation Européenne pour la Psychoanalyse and the Croatian Writers’ Society.

Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute in Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology in New York City and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group; and faculty at Florida Psychoanalytic Institute in Miami. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (2018, Routledge) and has published on issues of gender, sexuality, and sexual abuse.

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NBN Classic: Raluca Soreanu, "Working-through Collective Wounds: Trauma, Denial, Recognition in the Brazilian Uprising" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) Oct 30, 2022

Working-through Collective Wounds: Trauma, Denial, Recognition in the Brazilian Uprising (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) formulates a theory of collective trauma, drawing on the work of Sándor Ferenczi.

Dr. Soreanu takes Ferenczi into the public square to answer a series of questions. What does it mean to understand the operation of the confusions of tongues at the social level? What are the consequences of imagining the social as an encounter between different registers? And how did we come to postulate the importance, among all social registers, of the tension between the register of recognition and the register of redistribution?

Applying Ferenczian theory to these “interrogations” Soreanu utilizes psychosocial vignettes to make a series of arguments. “Akin to clinical vignettes, their aim is to capture a movement of the libido, or the expression of a symptom, or the resolution of a symptom, or a particular kind of regression, or a kind of dreaming-up that puts some symbols in relation to others.”

In addition to working with established meta-psychologies, Soreanu adds “the pleasure of analogy” to Ferenczi’s emergent ‘vocabulary of pleasure’. This new “doubly relational” pleasure takes us away from the Freudian “insistence on processes of identification” and demonstrates that our epistemologies are “libidinised affairs: they have an erotics.”

At the end of the book, Soreanu answers two questions: What returns to psychoanalysis, after taking Ferenczi to the streets and to the squares, alongside crowds in protest? What returns to social theory, after we have taken Ferenczi to the streets?

Working-through Collective Wounds is part of a series, Studies in the Psychosocial “distinguished by its emphasis on affect, the irrational and unconscious processes, often, but not necessarily, understood psychoanalytically.”

Raluca Soreanu is Reader in Psychoanalytic Studies and Director of Research of the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex.

Christopher Russell is a psychoanalyst in Chelsea Manhattan and can be reached at (212) 260-8115

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NBN Classic: Jonathan Sklar, "Dark Times: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Politics, History and Mourning" (Phoenix, 2018) Oct 29, 2022

"Although small, this book goes against the grain of the current trend for brief soundbites that allow us to pass swiftly over painful information. It will go into the details of some extremely dark occurrences, not to glorify cruelties, but in order to understand them, as well to give thought to the individuals who suffered them. In turn, this will provide the reader with greater access to things residing in the unconscious."

In Dark Times: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Politics, History and Mourning (Phoenix Publishing House, 2018), Dr Jonathan Sklar presents us with a book of unsettling stories about the heinous crimes of Nazi Germany, the brutal attacks perpetrated by ISIS and the continued racist structure of the very fabric of US politics and discourse, just to name a few.

Some of these stories are difficult to take in: The visceral descriptions can only be read in a psychosomatic sense. The strength of psychoanalytic thinking about political and historical violence lies in how close we get to the object of study.

In the consulting room we cannot help to feel with the analysand. The histories and phantasies of violence leave an impression. The book argues to face history and reality in order to reckon with the marks that collective violence has left and continues to leave on the individual psyche.

This is no random endeavour : A greater conscious awareness of the dark times we have lived through and of the racist, anti-semitic, familicidal characters within us, we get a chance to mourn all that was lost in and around us - a chance to hopefully at times break the cycle of endless repetition.

In between this psychoanalytically informed reading of history, politics and their relation to the individual psyche, Sklar leaves room for applying the analysis of the histories of trauma and mourning to groups like psychoanalytic societies and institutes. Here especially, the close examination of obstacles to recognition of the Other, rooted in deeply unconscious phantasy, bears fruit.

One way out might be offered through the practice of listening « contrapuntally » - a way of listening in which the barrier to recognition is actively faced, confronted and worked through.

Dr Jonathan Sklar, MBBS, FRCPsych is a training and supervising psychoanalyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society.

Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de.

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Robin McCoy Brooks, "Psychoanalysis, Catastrophe, and Social Action" (Routledge, 2021) Oct 17, 2022

Robin McCoy Brooks' bookPsychoanalysis, Catastrophe, and Social Action (Routledge, 2021) uses psychoanalytic theory to explore how political subjectivity comes about within the context of global catastrophe, via the emergence of collective individuations through trans-subjectivity. Serving as a jumping-off point to address the structural linkage between collective catastrophe, subject, group, and political transformation, trans-subjectivity is the central tenet of the book, conceptualized as a psyche-social dynamic that initiates social transformation and which may be enhanced in the clinical setting.

Each chapter investigates a distinct manifestation of trans-subjectivity in relation to various real-world events as they manifest clinically in the analytic couple and within group processes. The author builds her conceptual arguments through a psyche/social reading of Kristeva's theory of signifiance (sublimation), Lacan's 1945 essay on collective logic, Heidegger's secular reading of the apostle Paul's Christian revolution, and Zizek, Badiou and Jung's conception of the neighbor within a differentiated humanity. The book features clinical illustrations, an auto-ethnographic study of the emergence of an AIDS clinic, an accounting of trans-subjectivity in Black revolutionary events in the U.S., and an examination of some expressions of care that arose in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Psychoanalysis, Catastrophe & Social Action is important reading for psychoanalysts, psycho-dynamic based therapists, psychologists, group therapists, philosophers and political activists.

Roy Barsness is a Clinical Psychoanalytic Psychologist, Founder and Executive Director of the Post-Graduate Program in Relationally-Focused Psychodynamic Therapy; Professor at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology and have been in clinical practice for 30+ years.

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Henry Markman, "Creative Engagement in Psychoanalytic Practice" (Routledge, 2021) Oct 07, 2022

Creative Engagement in Psychoanalytic Practice (Routledge, 2021) fills the gaps in current clinical training and theory by highlighting the importance of the analyst's unique voice, creativity, and embodied awareness in authentically being with and relating to patients. In this original and personal account, Henry Markman provides an integrated approach toward analytic work that focuses on engaged embodied dialogue between analyst and patient, where emotional states are shared in an open circuit of communication as the route to self-discovery and growth. The involvement of the analyst's singular and spontaneous self is crucial.

In integrated and illuminating chapters, Markman emphasizes the therapeutic importance of the analyst's embodied presence and openness, improvisational accompaniment, and love within the analytic framework. Vivid clinical vignettes illustrate the emotional work of the analyst that is necessary to be openly engaged in a mutual yet asymmetric relationship. From over 30 years of clinical practice and teaching, Markman has synthesized a variety of contemporary theories in an approachable and alive way.

This book will appeal to psychoanalytically oriented clinicians, ranging from those beginning training to the most seasoned practitioners.

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The Future of Brainwashing: A Discussion with Daniel Pick Sep 27, 2022

In this podcast Owen Bennett-Jones and psychoanalyst Daniel Pick discuss brainwashing, thought control and group think. In the case of totalitarian political systems, do dissidents prove that brainwashing cannot be guaranteed to work? Or do the techniques used by advertisers and political leaders in fact mean people are being manipulated and can do nothing about it?

Pick is the author of Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control (Wellcome Collection, 2020).

Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.

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Samo Tomšič, "The Labour of Enjoyment: Towards a Critique of Libidinal Economy" (Walther Konig Verlag, 2019) Sep 27, 2022

Enjoyment appears as purely private matter, but this is by far not the case. Ever since Aristotle the philosophical social critique is tormented by the question, whether the libidinal tendencies of human subjects allow the construction of a just political-economic order. It seemed at first that in modernity this problem had been overcome. Economic liberalism and utilitarianism argued that egoistic private interests and social justice were directly linked and that capitalism united libidinal and political economy in the best possible manner. But the political-economic panorama soon turned out significantly more complex and contradictory. Tomšič’s book The Labour of Enjoyment: Towards a Critique of Libidinal Economy (Walther Konig Verlag, 2020) recalls central Marxian and Freudian insights and circumscribes the political stakes of psychoanalysis under the general banner of a Critique of Libidinal Economy.

Samo Tomšič is interim professor of philosophy in Hamburg at the University of Fine Arts.

Reuben Niewenhuis is interested in philosophy, theory, technology, and interdisciplinary topics. Subscribe to his interviews here.

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NBN Classic: Shanna de la Torre, "Sex for Structuralists: The Non-Oedipal Logics of Femininity and Psychosis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) Sep 25, 2022

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time.

What might Levi-Strauss and structuralism have to offer to psychoanalysis beyond the incest prohibition and the Oedipus complex? What happens if we understand Lacan’s notion of the symbolic as creative, rather than prohibitory? And what’s the difference between the psychoanalyst and the shaman? Shanna de la Torre’s Sex for Structuralists: The Non-Oedipal Logics of Femininity and Psychosis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) performs a careful reading of Freudian, Lacanian and structuralist texts in order to offer a new way of conceiving of the objects and aims of psychoanalysis today. Alongside it she introduces us to an alternative perspective on Lacan emerging from analysts associated with GIFRIC, a Lacanian school based in Quebec. Listen in as we work our way through some of the book’s major concerns and their implications for theory and practice.

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NBN Classic: Chenyang Wang, "Subjectivity In-Between Times: Exploring the Notion of Time in Lacan's Work" (Palgrave, 2019) Sep 24, 2022

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time.

If you thought Jacques Lacan’s essay on "Logical Time" was the psychoanalyst’s final word on the subject, then this interview has a lot to teach you! In his new book Subjectivity In-Between Times: Exploring the Notion of Time in Lacan's Work (Palgrave, 2019), emerging scholar of psychoanalytic theory and continental philosophy Chenyang Wang offers the first systematic analysis of the notion of time in Lacan’s work.

Wang, based in East China Normal University, begins by telling us about the state of psychoanalysis in China, before offering a fascinating exploration of how Lacan enables us to radically rethink the past, present, and future. Wang’s approach challenges us to think beyond a linear approach to time and a reductive focus early childhood, rigorously theorising the interrelation of social, bodily, egoic, and unsymbolisable aspects of temporal subjectivity. Toward the end of the interview we focus on Wang’s innovative temporal re-reading of sexual difference, which generously responds to queer and social constructionist challenges to psychoanalysis.

This interview is the first in my new series on Psychoanalysis and Time, produced in collaboration with Waiting Times, a multidisciplinary research project on the temporalities of healthcare. Waiting Times is supported by The Wellcome Trust [205400/A/16/Z], and takes places across Birkbeck (University of London) and the University of Exeter. Learn more about the project by visiting www.whatareyouwaitingfor.org.uk, or follow us on twitter @WhatisWaiting.

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Robert Beshara, "Freud and Said: Contrapuntal Psychoanalysis as Liberation Praxis" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021) Sep 23, 2022

Robert Beshara’s Freud and Said: Contrapuntal Psychoanalysis as Liberation Praxis(Palgrave, 2021) is a guide through the textual relationship between the work of Sigmund Freud and Edward Said. It is also a valuable handbook in critical psychology that chronicles many works at the intersection of psychoanalysis and decoloniality from around the world. Beshara urges psychoanalytic practitioners to consider the fundamental role of colonial difference in our psychic lives and demonstrates the importance of accounting for unconscious processes in the study of culture and the work of decolonization.

Between April 1st and July 1st, 2021, a 20% discount is applicable across all formats of the book upon checkout on the Palgrave website. The discount code is FreudSaid20

Vira Sachenko is a researcher of culture and psychoanalysis with interests in intellectual history, (de)coloniality, and constructions of femininity. She can be reached at virasachenko@gmail.com

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Danielle Knafo, "The New Sexual Landscape and Contemporary Psychoanalysis" (Confer Books, 2020) Sep 22, 2022

The sexual landscape has changed dramatically in the past few decades, with the meaning of gender and sexuality now being parsed within the realms of gender fluidity, nonheteronormative sexuality, BDSM, and polyamory. The sea change in sexual attitudes has also made room for the mainstreaming of internet pornography and the use of virtual reality for sexual pleasure – and the tech gurus have not even scratched the surface when it comes to mining the possibilities of alternative realities.

In The New Sexual Landscape and Contemporary Psychoanalysis (Confer Books, 2020), Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco survey modern sex culture and suggests ways psychoanalysis can update its theories and practice to meet the novel needs of today’s generations; at the same time, paying special attention to technology, which is augmenting and expanding sexual and gender possibilities. The authors consider how sexuality and bonding in this brave new world are best suited to meet our psychoanalytic needs.

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Lara Sheehi and Stephen Sheehi, "Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine" (Routledge, 2021) Sep 19, 2022

On this episode, J.J. Mull interviews co-authors Lara and Stephen Sheehi about their book, Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2021). As they discuss in the interview, the book represents years of research, engagement, and relationship-building with and alongside psychoanalytically oriented Palestinian clinicians working throughout historic Palestine. These relationships and solidarities form the base from which the authors start to think about the intersection of psychoanalysis, decoloniality, and liberatory practice.

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Amber M. Trotter, "Psychoanalysis as a Subversive Phenomenon: Social Change, Virtue Ethics, and Analytic Theory" (Lexington Books, 2020) Sep 14, 2022

“Perhaps psychoanalysis survives because it obstinately carries a torch of wild freedom and reverence for the unknowable in a world of rational epistemology and increasingly rigid sociopolitical control. Psychoanalysis does not scream its sociopolitical agenda, waving signs and shouting slogans, but may be a fundamentally political project nonetheless, and one of a subversive nature.”

In her book Psychoanalysis as a Subversive Phenomenon: Social Change, Virtue Ethics, and Analytic Theory (Lexington Books, 2020) Amber Trotter teases out the radical legacy of psychoanalysis. Contrary to some attempts in the field to tone down the disruptive potential of psychoanalysis to make it respectable, she champions psychoanalysis as a force of radical change of the individual and collective psychic functioning. A central question of the book seems to be why psychoanalysis rarely delivers on its subversive promise. How might the discipline need to develop to counter its hypermarginalization and position it in optimal and generative marginality to urgent issues of ethics and politics? Among other pertinent issues, I read the book as a plea for solidarity within the field to help bringing about this development.

Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de.

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On Sigmund Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents" Sep 06, 2022

In 1930, Sigmund Freud wrote Civilization and its Discontents and laid out his theory of civilization: civilization’s a problem, and it makes us unhappy. Freud felt humans were aggressive creatures by nature, that we delight in exercising our aggression and hurting one another. He claimed that civilization, with its laws and mores, prevents us from gratifying that aggressiveness. Elizabeth Lunbeck is a professor in the History of Science Department and Director of Graduate Studies at Harvard University, specializing in the history of psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and psychology. Her written works include The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, and Power in Modern America and The Americanization of Narcissism. See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm.

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Carl Waitz and Theresa Clement Tisdale, "Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Eastern Orthodox Christian Anthropology in Dialogue" (Routledge, 2022) Aug 29, 2022

Carl Waitz and Theresa Clement Tisdale offer to us a complex and scholarly text in their new book: Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Eastern Orthodox Christian Anthropology in Dialogue (Routledge, 2021).

Psychoanalyst Marilyn Charles says of this text, in today’s world, we need faith, but one that is grounded in the essential mysteries that mark the human journey. In this volume, Waitz and Tisdale make a plea for the place of the inexplicable in both psychoanalysis and religion, inviting a reading of each that advocates for, not knowledge, but rather a learning that can continue to enrich our lives and spirits rather than closing down possibilities. For those attempting to move beyond pleasure and fear towards an ethic of personal responsibility, this is an important volume.

This book vigorously engages Lacan with a spiritual tradition that has yet to be thoroughly addressed within psychoanalytic literature―the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition.

Waitz and Tisdale seek to offer the reader a unique engagement with a faith system that highlights and extends analytic thinking. For those in formation within the Orthodox tradition, this book brings psychoanalytic insights to bear on matters of faith that may at times seem opaque or difficult to understand. Ultimately, the authors seek to elicit in the reader the reflective and contemplative posture of Orthodoxy, as well as the listening ear of analysis, while considering the human subject.

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Jamieson Webster, "Disorganisation & Sex" (Divided Publishing, 2022) Aug 22, 2022

The first collection of essays from the author of the Life and Death of Psychoanalysis, Stay, Illusion! with Simon Critchley and Conversion Disorder, Disorganisation & Sex (Divided Publishing, 2022) is as much about our resistance to sexuality as it is about sex itself. Jamieson Webster continues to excite and disturb, turning to Lacan and the autotheoretical in her exploration of the deep roots of our libidinal ties and the ways in which we keep desire at bay in our efforts to lead tidier, more coherent lives.

Part theory, part manifesto and part testimony, Webster calls for us as analysts to reinvent ourselves with our patients, as patients to take part in the poetry of our symptoms, and as institutions to create the conditions for something radical to happen in the transmission of psychoanalysis.

While many in theory have turned toward the soma and the exterior, Webster has not given up on psychic interiority, her writing an attempt to avoid the trap of idealizing one while diminishing the other, or getting stuck in the reversal. We can wish for the new while remaining skeptical of the march of progress, and we can speak from the discourse of the patient while remaining connected to the discourse of the analyst. We can take risks even as we face loss, and seek pleasure even though there’s no common satisfaction.

Cassandra B. Seltman is a writer, psychoanalyst, and researcher in New York City. cassandraseltman@gmail.com

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Jordan Osserman, "Circumcision on the Couch: The Cultural, Psychological, and Gendered Dimensions of the World's Oldest Surgery" (Bloomsbury, 2022) Aug 15, 2022

It is not terribly controversial to say that castration fear is one of the key conceptual engines driving the psychoanalytic project overall. Whether one thinks of it manifesting as a looming, retributive threat for incestuous longings or as a struggle to face one’s shortcomings, contending with what we are at risk of losing or what has already gone missing animates both the field and the consulting room. Imagine the profession if it didn’t contend with this subject: without castration we would have neither Oedipal conflict nor a theory of repression. As such, it is noteworthy to consider the paucity of writing about circumcision in psychoanalysis, especially when you remember that circumcision and castration both involve cutting male genitalia. And before you protest that a penis is not a testicle, it should not come as a surprise that in the unconscious the bits and bobs of male genitalia might not be represented as separately as they are in medical discourse—in the unconscious sometimes a penis is a scrotal sac and sometimes the balls include the dick.

Jordan Osserman’s Circumcision on the Couch: The Cultural, Psychological, and Gendered Dimensions of the World's Oldest Surgery (Bloomsbury, 2022), approaches the subject of penile cutting née circumcision from myriad angles. It represents the pining of contemporary “intactivists” in search of lost foreskins and lost chances as both poignant if not also politically pregnant with neoliberal meaning. It fleshes out the pondering of St. Paul (of “love thy neighbor as thyself’ fame) on the importance of the unimportance of circumcision. It illuminates the ways in which what appears to be a fear of childhood sexuality run amok also belies a prurient interest in it. The discussion of 19th century American medicine’s invention of reflex theory, which employed circumcision to cure boys’ perceived ailments, investigates a mode of thinking that will be familiar to readers of feminist medical history of the same period. The removal of the foreskin and the removal of the uterus share a close, perhaps twinned, relationship.

Osserman has written a book that invites the reader to see circumcision as a rite, experience, discourse and practice that offers itself up to unabashedly efflorescent and ambivalent readings. Is a penis without a foreskin more masculine because it lacks a flowery covering— think of tulip petals or better yet pansies strewn on the roadside? Or is a penis without a foreskin a tad castrated, having been bloodied, (and a tad envious—sorry Alice Cooper but not only women bleed) and so ultimately feminized? We are encouraged to wonder what might keep this practice—the world’s oldest surgery—in seemingly perpetual, if at times contested, circulation? What are the unconscious roots of the wish to cut penises anyway?

I found myself a little surprised at how little I or others I know have given thought to the beautifully irrational reasons that underlie a surgical practice (performed the world over and without any singular religious allegiance as it ends up) laden with meaning and yet not medically necessary. What has given it such staying power? What unconscious conflicts might circumcision sate, if not actually resolve? In trying to answer these questions, I find myself asking if there is any relationship between circumcision and Freud’s idea that the repudiation of femininity functions as a kind of bedrock? What is bedrock is challenging to crack open (intellectually, philosophically) precisely because it is foundational. It is the ground upon which we stand. We fear fucking with it.

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Mark Solms, "The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness" (Norton, 2021) Aug 12, 2022

If you have ever been skeptical about whether neuroscience has anything to teach psychoanalysis, or vice-versa, you will be stimulated by this book which engages the two disciplines in a fascinating dialogue with each other. How does the mind connect to the body? Why does it feel like something to be us? For one of the boldest thinkers in neuroscience, solving this puzzle has been a lifetime's quest. Now at last, the man who discovered the brain mechanism for dreaming appears to have made a breakthrough. The very idea that a solution is at hand may seem outrageous. Isn't consciousness intangible, beyond the reach of science?

Yet Mark Solms shows how misguided fears and suppositions have concealed its true nature. Stick to the medical facts, pay close attention to the eerie testimony of hundreds of neurosurgery patients, and a way past our obstacles reveals itself. Join Solms on a voyage into the extraordinary realms beyond. More than just a philosophical argument, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness (Norton, 2021) will forever alter how you understand your own experience. There is a secret buried in the brain's ancient foundations: bring it into the light and we fathom all the depths of our being.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com.

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Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, "Hatred of Sex" (U Nebraska Press, 2022) Aug 11, 2022

How well do we understand our relationship to sex? According to Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, authors of the new book Hatred of Sex (University of Nebraska Press, 2022), we tend to overlook the “unpleasurable pleasures” that are integral to sex. Sex undoes us, destabilizes us, takes us out of ourselves. Many of our 21st century cultural products—Queer Theory, traumatology, intersectional studies—secretly “hate” sex for these very reasons and build such hatred into their ideas. In our interview, Davis and Dean explain why a full understanding and experience of sex require our reckoning with these truths, and they offer conceptual tools for undertaking such a reckoning. This interview is a must-listen for anyone curious about the unspoken dimensions of sex.

Oliver Davis is a professor of French studies at the University of Warwick. He is the author of Jacques Rancière and editor of Rancière Now. Tim Dean is James M. Benson Professor in English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking and Beyond Sexuality.

Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute in Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology in New York City and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group; and faculty at Florida Psychoanalytic Institute in Miami. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (2018, Routledge) and has published on issues of gender, sexuality, and sexual abuse.

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Transgender Children: From Controversy to Dialogue Jul 11, 2022

How do we go forward in our psychoanalytic understanding of transgender children? This highly contested issue is at the core of an interesting edition of the journal The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child (Volume 75, Issue 1, 2022), titled “Transgender Children: From Controversy to Dialogue”, and edited by Jordan Osserman and Hannah Wallerstein. To counter the feeling of being stuck in an endless spiral of splitting and binary thinking in the field, they have proposed a new model of dialogue: Four scholars of issues connected to transgender children, namely Eve Watson, Oren Gozlan, Tobias Wiggins and Laurel Silber, shared their views in four short papers, and then engaged in a real-time online discussion, which was transcribed and edited for the journal. In the edition, as well as in the interview, a lot of ground is covered: Questions about the psychoanalytic theorization of gender and the mind-body divide are raised and clinical issues like regret, responsibility and countertransference phenomena are discussed. Maybe one way forward in our clinical approach might be found neither in affirmation, nor in neutrality, but in acceptance – a third term suggested in this volume. This interview will be of great interest to psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic clinicians working with children, adolescents and young adults, as well as scholars and researchers of gender and trans issues.

Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de.

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Helen Morgan, "The Work of Whiteness: A Psychoanalytic Perspective" (Routledge, 2021) Jul 06, 2022

'Whiteness' is a politically constructed category which needs to be understood and dismantled because the system of racism so embedded within our society harms us all. It has profound implications for human psychology, an understanding of which is essential for supporting the movement for change. Helen Morgan's The Work of Whiteness: A Psychoanalytic Perspective (Routledge, 2021)explores these implications from a psychoanalytic and Jungian analytic perspective.

The 'fragility' of whiteness, the colour-blind approach and the silencing process of disavowal as they develop in the childhood of white liberal families are considered as means of maintaining white privilege and racism. A critique of the colonial roots of psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Jung leads to questioning the de-linking of the individual from society in modern day analytic thinking. The concept of the cultural complex is suggested as a useful means of connecting the individual and the social. Examples from the author's clinical practice as well as from public life are used to illustrate the argument.

Relatively few black people join the psychoanalytic profession and those who do describe training and membership as a difficult and painful process. How racism operates in clinical work, supervision and our institutions is explored, and whilst it can seem an intractable problem, proposals are given for ways forward. This book will be of great importance to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, social workers and all those with an interest in the role of white privilege on mental health.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com

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Mark Neocleous, "The Politics of Immunity: Security and the Policing of Bodies" (Verso, 2022) May 12, 2022

Our contemporary political condition is obsessed with immunity. The immunity of bodies and the body politic; personal immunity and herd immunity; how to immunize the social system against breakdown. The obsession intensifies with every new crisis and the mobilization of yet more powers of war and police, from quarantine to border closures and from vaccination certificates to immunological surveillance.

Engaging four key concepts with enormous cultural weight – Cell, Self, System and Sovereignty – The Politics of Immunity: Security and the Policing of Bodies(Verso, 2022) moves from philosophical biology to intellectual history and from critical theory to psychoanalysis to expose the politics underpinning the way immunity is imagined. At the heart of this imagination is the way security has come to dominate the whole realm of human experience. From biological cell to political subject, and from physiological system to the social body, immunity folds into security, just as security folds into immunity. The book thus opens into a critique of the violence of security and spells out immunity’s tendency towards self-destruction and death: immunity, like security, can turn its aggression inwards, into the autoimmune disorder. Wide-ranging and polemical, this book lays down a major challenge to the ways in which the immunity of the self and the social are imagined.

In this interview, I spoke with Mark Neocleous about his fascinating and wide-ranging book The Politics of Immunity. We also spent time discussing his previous work on security and police power, the personal context informing this work, and connections with the ongoing UK undercover policing controversy (discussed in my previous interview with the authors of Deep Deception).

Content warning: between 43-45 minutes into the podcast, there is a brief discussion of suicide in the context of Mark's forthcoming work.

Mark Neocleous is Professor of the Critique of Political Economy at Brunel University in London, and is well-known for his influential work on police power and security. His recent books include The Universal Adversary: Security, Capital and 'The Enemies of All Mankind' (2016); War Power, Police Power (2014); and the newly-reissued A Critical Theory of Police Power: The Fabrication of Social Order (2021).

Catriona Gold is a PhD candidate in Geography at University College London. She is currently researching the US Passport Office's role in governing Cold War travel, and broadly interested in questions of security, surveillance and mobility. She can be reached by email or on Twitter.

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Death Drive Apr 25, 2022

Kim talks with Michelle Rada about the death drive in psychoanalysis.

Michelle references Todd McGowan’s Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis, University of Nebraska Press, 2013. She also recommends Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets, by Todd McGowan. In our longer conversation, she also quoted, What IS Sex? by Alenka Zupančič, MIT Press, 2017.

She also recommends a special issue of differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies on “Constructing the Death Drive.” This issue includes an article by Luce Cantin, “The Drive, the Untreatable Quest of Desire” which she discusses in the epidsode. Michelle thinks the whole issue is worth checking out, and especially recommends the article in there by Tracy McNulty as well, “Unbound: The Speculative Mythology of the Death Drive” and the piece by Willy Apollon, “Psychoanalysis and the Freudian Rupture.”

She also highly recommends Life and Death in Psychoanalysis by Jean Laplanche (Johns Hopkins UP, 1976), which really informs her understanding of the economics/psychic structure of the drive, and of course….Beyond the Pleasure Principle by Sigmund Freud.

And “On Narcissism: An Introduction,” Freud’s 1914 essay on primary/secondary narcissism.

Michelle Rada is a PhD candidate in English at Brown University and Affiliated Faculty at Emerson College. Her research is on modernist aesthetics, form, the novel, and psychoanalysis. Michelle’s work has appeared in Room One-Thousand, The Comparatist, The James Joyce Quarterly, The Journal of Beckett Studies, and The Journal of Modern Literature. She is Senior Assistant Editor at differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies.

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Fort/Da Apr 11, 2022

In this episode, Kim talks with Saronik about the game “Fort / Da” — a game played by Sigmund Freud’s grandson in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, (which you can borrow from the amazing Internet Archive).

Our cover image comes from another text on Internet Archive, in the Medical Heritage Library’s collection: Die Suggestion und ihre Heilwirkung, written by Hippolyte Bernheim and Sigmund Freud in 1888. The image appears on page 330.

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Alice Jardine, "At the Risk of Thinking: An Intellectual Biography of Julia Kristeva" (Bloomsbury, 2020) Apr 08, 2022

At the Risk of Thinking: An Intellectual Biography of Julia Kristeva(Bloomsbury, 2020) is the first biography of Julia Kristeva--one of the most celebrated intellectuals in the world. Alice Jardine brings Kristeva's work to a broader readership by connecting Kristeva's personal journey, from her childhood in Communist Bulgaria to her adult life as an international public intellectual based in Paris, with the history of her ideas. Informed by extensive interviews with Kristeva herself, this telling of a remarkable woman's life story also draws out the complexities of Kristeva's writing, emphasizing her call for an urgent revival of bold interdisciplinary thinking in order to understand--and to act in--today's world.

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The Future of Delusions: A Discussion with Lisa Bortolotti Apr 05, 2022

The accusation “you’re deluded” is often used as something of a cheap shot intended to silence an opponent in debate. But what is the nature of a delusion and how can we assess rationality and irrationality? In this podcast, Owen Bennett-Jones talks to Professor Lisa Bortolotti who studies the philosophy of psychology and psychiatry at Birmingham University and is the author of among many other things, Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs(Oxford UP, 2010) and most recently edited Delusions in Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

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Mark Epstein, "The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life" (Penguin, 2022) Apr 01, 2022

A remarkable exploration of the therapeutic relationship, Dr. Mark Epstein reflects on one year’s worth of therapy sessions with his patients to observe how his training in Western psychotherapy and his equally long investigation into Buddhism, in tandem, led to greater awareness—for his patients, and for himself

For years, Dr. Mark Epstein kept his beliefs as a Buddhist separate from his work as a psychiatrist. Content to use his training in mindfulness as a private resource, he trusted that the Buddhist influence could, and should, remain invisible. But as he became more forthcoming with his patients about his personal spiritual leanings, he was surprised to learn how many were eager to learn more. The divisions between the psychological, emotional, and the spiritual, he soon realized, were not as distinct as one might think.

In The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life (Penguin, 2022), Dr. Epstein reflects on a year’s worth of selected sessions with his patients and observes how, in the incidental details of a given hour, his Buddhist background influences the way he works. Meditation and psychotherapy each encourage a willingness to face life’s difficulties with courage that can be hard to otherwise muster, and in this cross-section of life in his office, he emphasizes how therapy, an element of Western medicine, can in fact be considered a two-person meditation. Mindfulness, too, much like a good therapist, can “hold” our awareness for us—and allow us to come to our senses and find inner peace.

Throughout this deeply personal inquiry, one which weaves together the wisdom of two worlds, Dr. Epstein illuminates the therapy relationship as spiritual friendship, and reveals how a therapist can help patients cultivate the sense that there is something magical, something wonderful, and something to trust running through our lives, no matter how fraught they have been or might become. For when we realize how readily we have misinterpreted ourselves, when we stop clinging to our falsely conceived constructs, when we touch the ground of being, we come home.

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Emma Lieber, "The Writing Cure" (Bloomsbury, 2020) Mar 31, 2022

In the hills north of Rome about a month ago I met a woman, a writer, so blown away by her Dottoressa, her psychoanalyst, that she announced to the surprise of all around her (surprised I want to add that she was in analysis in the first place) that she was writing a book about her treatment. I thought of H.D. I thought of Alison Bechdel. Then I thought of Emma Lieber.

The Writing Cure(Bloomsbury, 2020), Lieber’s first book, is a hybrid text—equal parts the work of an analysand, a new clinician, a scholar of Russian literature, and a divorcing mother. It is also the work of a Lacanian-influenced analyst whose analytic credential comes from an institute not especially associated with the work of Lacan; as such, the book functions as a kind of “pass”, a representation of what it is that the author wants to present to a community of analysts who she hopes will see her as a peer.

Her writing is creaturely by which I mean her words are close to the ground. She is funny. She is droll. She takes you into a nook and a cranny and your heart breaks. Always almost conversational, until she stops talking to you. The result is very beautiful and elusive. Her voice is precisely that: hers. She reveals but also conceals. The reader could want more. The reader could want less. But the reader is left wanting. How else can an analyst write about her own treatment but to tell the truth only to also tell it (a la E. Dickinson) a tad slant?

Embracing auto-theory as a burgeoning psychoanalyst is no simple task. Lieber refers to certain writers bearing this hyphenated moniker, among them Maggie Nelson, Paul Preciado and Barbara Browning but not her own analyst who is known for her use of the same genre. Of course reading about an analysis—like watching two people fuck in a car—can feel prurient: “I didn’t mean to look but then I could not turn away.” Lieber nevertheless finds a way to circumvent our voyeuristic wishes. We meet her and then again, we are left wondering; we are left to wonder—which is kind of perfect for a book written by an analyst about her analysis—about her. She remains through her final written utterances, a powerful transference-magnet.

Tracy Morgan is the founding editor of NBiP and in private practice in NYC and Rome, Italy She can be reached at tracynewbooksinpsychoanalysis@gmail.com.

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Brett Kahr, "Freud's Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis" (Confer Books, 2022) Mar 11, 2022

In his latest book Freud's Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis (Confer Books, 2021), Professor Brett Kahr has used his remarkable skills as experienced psychotherapist and rigorous historian to tell a meticulously researched, deeply engaging tale of the trials and tribulations of Sigmund Freud's life. Kahr has taken an unflinching look at the darkest hours of this remarkable man, such as the Spanish flu of 1918, the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938 and a long struggle with carcinoma in later life. Digging deep into the archives, he has unearthed a treasure trove of stories that lets us appreciate Sigmund Freud`s genius even more against the backdrop of his struggle for survival. He has synthesized his findings in elegant prose to offer us an inspiring story of hope, most pertinent for our troubled times.

Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de.

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The Future of Consciousness: A Discussion with Eva Jablonka Mar 08, 2022

What makes a living body conscious? What is consciousness and are there different types of it? These questions have been studied by Professor Eva Jablonka from the Cohn Institute for the History of Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. Much of her early work was on epigenetic inheritance which poses questions such as whether learned behaviour can be passed on from one generation to the next and that has led her to think about whether it’s possible to take an evolutionary approach to consciousness.

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Kile M. Ortigo, "Beyond the Narrow Life: A Guide to Psychedelic Integration and Existential Exploration" (Synergetic Press, 2021) Mar 03, 2022

Kile M. Ortigo's Beyond the Narrow Life: A Guide to Psychedelic Integration and Existential Exploration(Synergetic Press, 2021) addresses major issues that arise from the psychospiritual and therapeutic use of psychedelics. It describes a core structure that psychedelic journeys exhibit, and share, with classic mythologies; religious traditions; and spiritual practices. Its method is to integrate findings from cognitive-behavioral therapy, Jungian depth psychology, existential philosophy, compassion and mindfulness practices, comparative mythology, pop culture, film, and scientific understandings of the cosmos. The book also includes exercises designed to guide readers through the profound questions raised by diverse individual journeys of change and growth.

Steve Beitler’s work in the history of medicine focuses on how pain has been understood, treated, experienced, and represented. Recently published articles examined the history of opiates in American football and surveyed the history of therapeutic drugs. He can be reached at noelandsteve@gmail.com.

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William R. Miller, "On Second Thought: How Ambivalence Shapes Your Life" (Guilford, 2021) Feb 23, 2022

The rich inner world of a human being is far more complex than either/or. You can love and hate, want to go and want to stay, feel both joy and sadness. In On Second Thought: How Ambivalence Shapes Your Life (Guilford, 2021), psychologist William Miller--one of the world's leading experts on the science of change--offers a fresh perspective on ambivalence and its transformative potential in this revealing book. Rather than trying to overcome indecision by force of will, Dr. Miller explores what happens when people allow opposing arguments from their “inner committee members” to converse freely with each other. Learning to tolerate and even welcome feelings of ambivalence can help you get unstuck from unwanted habits, clarify your desires and values, explore the pros and cons of tough decisions, and open doorways to change. Vivid examples from everyday life, literature, and history illustrate why we are so often "of two minds," and how to work through it.

William R. Miller, PhD, is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico.

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Jerome S. Gans, "Addressing Challenging Moments in Psychotherapy: Clinical Wisdom for Working with Individuals, Groups and Couples" (Routledge, 2021) Feb 03, 2022

This practical and helpful volume details how clinicians can work through various common challenges in individual, couple, or group psychotherapy.

Chapters draw upon clinical wisdom gleaned from the author’s 48 years as a practicing psychiatrist to address topics such as using countertransference for therapeutic purposes; resistance, especially when it needs to be the focus of the therapy; and a prioritization of exploration over explanation. Along with theory and clinical observations, Dr. Gans offers a series of "Clinical Pearls," pithy comments that highlight different interventions to a wide range of clinical challenges. These include patient hostility, the abrupt and unilateral termination of therapy, the therapist’s loss of compassionate neutrality when treating a couple, and many more. Many of the "Clinical Pearls" prioritize working in the here-and-now. In addition to offering advice and strategies for therapists, the book also addresses concerns like the matter of fees in private practice and the virtue of moral courage on the part of the therapist.

Written with clarity, heart, and an abundance of clinical wisdom, Addressing Challenging Moments in Psychotherapy: Clinical Wisdom for Working with Individuals, Groups and Couples (Routledge, 2021) is essential reading for all clinicians, teachers, and supervisors of psychotherapy.

Jerome S. Gans, MD, is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association and the American Psychiatric Association. Now retired, he previously worked in private practice and as Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.

Elizabeth Cronin, Psy.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher with offices in Brookline and Norwood, MA. You can follow her on Instagram or visit her website.

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Jon Mills, "Debating Relational Psychoanalysis: Jon Mills and His Critics" (Routledge, 2020) Feb 01, 2022

In Debating Relational Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2020), Jon Mills provides an historical record of the debates that had taken place for nearly two decades on his critique of the relational school, including responses from his critics. Since he initiated his critique, relational psychoanalysis has become an international phenomenon with proponents worldwide. This book hopes that further dialogue may not only lead to conciliation, but more optimistically, that relational theory may be inspired to improve upon its theoretical edifice, both conceptually and clinically, as well as develop technical parameters to praxis that help guide and train new clinicians to sharpen their own theoretical orientation and therapeutic efficacy. Because of the public exchanges in writing and at professional symposiums, these debates have historical significance in the development of the psychoanalytic movement as a whole simply due to their contentiousness and proclivity to question cherished assumptions, both old and new. In presenting this collection of his work, and those responses of his critics, Mills argues that psychoanalysis may only advance through critique and creative refinement, and this requires a deconstructive praxis within the relational school itself.

Debating Relational Psychoanalysis will be of interest to psychoanalysts of all orientations, psychotherapists, mental health workers, psychoanalytic historians, philosophical psychologists, and the broad disciplines of humanistic, phenomenological, existential, and analytical psychology.

Jon Mills, PsyD, PhD, ABPP is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist. He is a faculty member in the postgraduate programs in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University, emeritus professor of psychology and psychoanalysis, Adler Graduate Professional School, and runs a mental health corporation in Ontario, Canada. Recipient of numerous awards for his scholarship, he is the author and editor of over 20 books in psychoanalysis, philosophy, psychology, and cultural studies.

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Susan E. Schwartz, "The Absent Father Effect on Daughters: Father Desire, Father Wounds" (Routledge, 2020) Jan 25, 2022

The Absent Father Effect on Daughters: Father Desire, Father Wounds (Routledge, 2020) investigates the impact of absent – physically or emotionally – and inadequate fathers on the lives and psyches of their daughters through the perspective of Jungian analytical psychology. This book tells the stories of daughters who describe the insecurity of self, the splintering and disintegration of the personality, and the silencing of voice. Issues of fathers and daughters reach to the intra-psychic depths and archetypal roots, to issues of self and culture, both personal and collective.

Susan E. Schwartz illustrates the maladies and disappointments of daughters who lack a father figure and incorporates clinical examples describing how daughters can break out of idealizations, betrayals, abandonments and losses to move towards repair and renewal. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach, expanding and elucidating Jungian concepts through dreams, personal stories, fairy tales and the poetry of Sylvia Plath, along with psychoanalytic theory, including Andre Green’s ‘dead father effect’ and Julia Kristeva’s theories on women and the body as abject. Examining daughters both personally and collectively affected by the lack of a father, The Absent Father Effect on Daughters is highly relevant for those wanting to understand the complex dynamics of daughters and fathers to become their authentic selves. It will be essential reading for anyone seeking understanding, analytical and depth psychologists, other therapy professionals, academics and students with Jungian and post-Jungian interests.

Christopher Russell is a Psychoanalyst in Chelsea, Manhattan.

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Amy Schwartz Cooney and Rachel Sopher, "Vitalization in Psychoanalysis: Perspectives on Being and Becoming" (Routledge, 2021) Jan 24, 2022

In Vitalization in Psychoanalysis: Perspectives on Being and Becoming(Routledge, 2021), Schwartz Cooney and Sopher develop and explore the concept of vitalization, generating new ways of approaching and conceptualizing the psychoanalytic project.

Vitalization refers to the process between two people that ignites new experiences and brings withdrawn aspects of the self to life. This book focuses on how psychoanalysis can be a uniquely creative encounter that can aid this enlivening internal process, offering a vibrant new take on the psychotherapeutic project. There is a long tradition in psychoanalysis that addresses the ways that the unique subjectivities of each member of the therapeutic dyad contribute to the repetition of entrenched patterns of relating, and how the processing of enactments can be reparative. But this overlap in subjectivities can also bring to life undeveloped experiences. This focus on generativity and progressive action represents a significant, cutting-edge turn in psychoanalysis. Vitalization in Psychoanalysis represents a deep meditation on this transformational moment in the history of psychoanalytic thought.

Pulling together work from major writers on vitalization from all the main psychoanalytic schools of thought, and covering development, theory and clinical practice, this book will be an invaluable guide for clinicians of all backgrounds, as well of students of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

Amy Schwartz Cooney, Ph.D., is on faculty at the New York University (NYU) Post-Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. She is on the Board of Directors and is faculty/supervisor at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) and at the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. She is Joint Editor in Chief of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and is in private practice in New York City.

Rachel Sopher is Board Director, Faculty and Supervisor, National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) Training Institute; Faculty and Supervisor, National Training Program for NIP; and Faculty, Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. She is Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Perspectives and maintains a private practice in New York City.

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Claudia Heilbrunn, "What Happens When the Analyst Dies: Unexpected Terminations in Psychoanalysis" (Routledge, 2019) Jan 19, 2022

What Happens When the Analyst Dies: Unexpected Terminations in Psychoanalysis(Routledge, 2019) explores the stories of patients who have experienced the death of their analyst. The book prioritizes the voices of patients, letting them articulate for themselves the challenges and heartache that occur when grappling with such a devastating loss. It also addresses the challenges faced by analysts who work with grieving patients and/or experience serious illness while treating patients.

Claudia Heilbrunn brings together contributors who discuss their personal experiences with bereavement and/or serious illness within the psychoanalytic encounter. Chapters include memoirs written by patients who describe not only the aftermath of an analyst's death, but also how the analyst's ability or inability to deal with his or her own illness and impending death within the treatment setting impacted the patient's own capacity to cope with their loss. Other chapters broach the challenges that arise (1) in 'second analyses', (2) for the ill analyst, and (3) for those who face the death of an analyst or mentor while in training.

Aiming to give prominence to the often neglected and unmediated voices of patients, as well as analysts who have dealt with grieving patients and serious illness, What Happens When the Analyst Dies strives to highlight and encourage discussion about the impact of an analyst's death on patients and the ways in which institutes and therapists could do more to protect those in their care. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, counselors, gerontologists, trainees, and patients who are currently in treatment or whose therapist has passed away.

Christopher Russell is a Psychoanalyst in Chelsea, Manhattan.

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Caron Harrang, "Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond" (Routledge, 2021) Dec 29, 2021

Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond (Routledge, 2021) explores the role of bodily phenomena in mental life and in the psychoanalytic encounter, encouraging further dialog within psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the humanities, and contributing new clinical and theoretical perspectives to the recent resurgence of psychoanalytic interest in the body.

Presented in six parts in which diverse meanings are explored, Body as Psychoanalytic Object focuses on the clinical psychoanalytic encounter and the body as object of psychoanalytic inquiry, spanning from the prenatal experience to death. The contributors explore key themes including mind-body relations in Winnicott, Bion, and beyond; oneiric body; nascent body in early object relations; body and psychosensory experience; body in breakdown; and body in virtual space. With clinical vignettes throughout, each chapter provides unique insight into how different analysts work with bodily phenomena in the clinical situation and how it is conceived theoretically.

Building on the thinking of Winnicott and Bion, as well as contributions from French psychoanalysis, Body as Psychoanalytic Object offers a way forward in a body-based understanding of object relations theory for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.

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Noreen Giffney, "The Culture-Breast in Psychoanalysis: Cultural Experiences and the Clinic" (Routledge, 2021) Dec 27, 2021

The Culture-Breast in Psychoanalysis: Cultural Experiences and the Clinic (Routledge, 2021) introduces "the culture-breast," a new clinical concept, to explore the central importance played by cultural objects in the psychical lives of patients and psychoanalytic clinical practitioners inside and outside the consulting room. Bringing together clinical writings from psychoanalysis and cultural objects from the applied fields of film, art, literature and music, the book also makes an argument for the usefulness of encounters with cultural objects as "non-clinical case studies" in the training and further professional development of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. Through its engagement with psychosocial studies, the text, furthermore, interrogates, challenges and offers a way through a hierarchical split that has become established in psychoanalysis between "clinical psychoanalysis" and "applied psychoanalysis."

Noreen Giffney is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, a psychosocial theorist and the director of Psychoanalysis +, an international, interdisciplinary initiative that brings together clinical, artistic and academic approaches to, and applications of, psychoanalysis. She has published and lectured extensively on psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies and critical theory. She works as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in County Donegal and as a lecturer in counselling at Ulster University.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com

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Paul Ian Steinberg, "Applying Psychoanalytic Thought to Contemporary Mental Health Practice" (Routledge, 2021) Dec 27, 2021

Dr. Paul Steinberg, Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, returns to New Books Network to discuss his latest book, Applying Psychoanalytic Thought to Contemporary Mental Health Practice (Routledge, 2021). In this latest work, a “sister” publication his prior Psychoanalysis in Medicine (Routledge, 2020), Dr. Steinberg describes the potential for psychoanalytic ideas and practice to be applied to a variety of mental health care contexts, including group therapy and partial hospitalization programs. He writes about how psychoanalysis has, and how it can continue to, reinvent itself on an ongoing basis, in parallel with evolving theory and technology. Through clinical vignettes, citation of psychoanalytic literature, and direct analysis, Dr. Steinberg offers an approachable, engaging, and personal discourse on psychoanalysis in modern mental health practice.

Alec Kacew is a medical school student at the University of Chicago.

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Karen J. Maroda, "The Analyst’s Vulnerability: Impact on Theory and Practice" (Routledge, 2021) Dec 23, 2021

The Analyst’s Vulnerability: Impact on Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2021) closely examines the analyst's early experiences and character traits, demonstrating the impact they have on theory building and technique. Arguing that choice of theory and interventions are unconsciously shaped by clinicians' early experiences, this book argues for greater self-awareness, self-acceptance, and open dialogue as a corrective.

Linking the analyst's early childhood experiences to ongoing vulnerabilities reflected in theory and practice, this book favors an approach that focuses on feedback and confrontation, as well as empathic understanding and acceptance. Essential to this task, and a thesis that runs through the book, are analysts' motivations for doing treatment and the gratifications they naturally seek. Maroda asserts that an enduring blind spot arises from clinicians' ongoing need to deny what they are personally seeking from the analytic process, including the need to rescue and be rescued. She equally seeks to remove the guilt and shame associated with these motivations, encouraging clinicians to embrace both their own humanity and their patients', rather than seeking to transcend them. Providing a new perspective on how analysts work, this book explores the topics of enactment, mirror neurons, and therapeutic action through the lens of the analyst's early experiences and resulting personality structure. Maroda confronts the analyst's tendencies to favor harmony over conflict, passivity over active interventions, and viewing the patient as an infant rather than an adult.

Exploring heretofore unexamined issues of the psychology of the analyst or therapist offers the opportunity to generate new theoretical and technical perspectives. As such, this book will be invaluable to experienced psychodynamic therapists and students and trainees alike, as well as teachers of theory and practice.

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Jacob Johanssen, "Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere: Male Bodies of Dis/Inhibition" (Routledge, 2021) Dec 14, 2021

In his new book Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere: Male Bodies of Dis/Inhibition (Routledge, 2021), Jacob Johanssen takes us on a journey into the dark masculinist recesses of the internet. He analyses original data from online communities of Involuntary Celibate (Incel) men, women-denigrating “Men Going Their Own Way”, anti-porn crusading NoFap users and the manifestos of mass shooters. By making use of the work of Willhelm Reich, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl and Klaus Theweleit, he is able to construct a convincing and sinister portrait of this dis/inhibited online culture, in which intermingling fantasies of victimhood and destructive annihilation of the feminine Other create a seething mélange of hatred and misogyny. It is testament to the power of the psychoanalytically informed approach of gathering “identificatory knowledge” that Johanssen does not stop at painting a damning picture of these men, but tries to grasp the psychodynamics at play in their polarized and fragmented world views and identities. As unlikely as it seems, there is even a glimmer of hope at the end of the book. Johanssen applies Jessica Benjamin’s concept of recognition to the men discussed - a possible way out of the dead end of the obsessively intensified hate of the manosphere? We discuss this question and many more in the interview.

Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de.

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Philip Larratt-Smith and Juliet Mitchell, "Louise Bourgeois, Freud's Daughter" (Yale UP, 2021) Dec 08, 2021

From 1952 to 1985, Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) underwent extensive Freudian analysis that probed her family history, marriage, motherhood, and artistic ambition--and generated inspiration for her artwork. Examining the impact of psychoanalysis on Bourgeois's work, this volume offers insight into her creative process. Philip Larratt-Smith, Bourgeois's literary archivist, provides an overview of the artist's life and work and the ways in which the psychoanalytic process informed her artistic practice. An essay by Juliet Mitchell offers a cutting-edge feminist psychoanalyst's viewpoint on the artist's long and complex relationship with therapy. In addition, a short text written by Bourgeois (first published in 1991) addresses Freud's own relationship to art and artists. Featuring excerpts from Bourgeois's copious diaries, rarely seen notebook pages, and archival family photographs, Louise Bourgeois, Freud's Daughter (Yale UP, 2021) opens exciting new avenues for understanding an innovative, influential, and groundbreaking artist whose wide-ranging work includes not only renowned large-scale sculptures but also a plethora of paintings and prints.

Isak de Vries is psychoanalyst in private practice in New York, NY.

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Galit Atlas, "Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma" (Little, Brown Spark, 2022) Nov 24, 2021

Loss and trauma are ubiquitous, yet we are often unaware of their presence in our individual and family histories, much less how they affect us present-day. We carry them in symptoms, dreams, and patterns that seemingly lack explanation yet haunt us for much of our lives. The key to working through them may lie in uncovering ungrieved losses and making connections between past and present. Author and psychoanalyst Galit Atlas addresses such phenomena in her new book, Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma (Little, Brown Spark, 2022). She shares experiences from her work with patients that illustrate the healing power of verbalizing unspoken traumas, as well as her own journey to put words to what was never mourned. In our interview, we talk about how the book came about and what it taught her about loss and love. This interview is for anyone who feels perplexed about their experience and curious to understand themselves better.

Galit Atlas, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst and clinical supervisor in private practice in New York City. She is a faculty member of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is a faculty member of the National Training Program and the Four Year Adult Training Program of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York City. Dr. Atlas has published three books for clinicians and numerous articles and book chapters that focus primarily on gender and sexuality. Her New York Times publication “A Tale of Two Twins” was the winner of a 2016 Gradiva Award. A leader in the field of relational psychoanalysis, Dr. Atlas is a recipient of the André François Award and the NADTA Research Award. She teaches and lectures throughout the United States and internationally.

genio Duarte

, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute in Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology in New York City and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group; and faculty at Florida Psychoanalytic Institute in Miami. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (2018, Routledge) and has published on issues of gender, sexuality, and sexual abuse.

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Christos Tombras, "Discourse Ontology: Body and the Construction of a World, from Heidegger through Lacan" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) Nov 23, 2021

We interview Dr. Christos Tombras, a supervising psychoanalyst with a Lacanian orientation, practicing in London. Dr. Tombras is a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, UK, and lectures, runs workshops and facilitates reading groups. His main research interest is in a dialogue between continental philosophy and psychoanalysis. He has published in both English and Greek.

We discussed his book Discourse Ontology: Body and the Construction of a World, from Heidegger Through Lacan(Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Lacan studied both Freud (of course) and Heidegger. Heidegger not only critiqued the scientific worldview, but he also specifically criticized Freud’s work. Tombras provides a synthesis of (Lacan’s return to) Freud and Heidegger, a discourse ontology.

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Gila Ashtor, "Homo Psyche: On Queer Theory and Erotophobia" (Fordham UP, 2021) Nov 22, 2021

In this episode, I interview Gila Ashtor, a practicing psychoanalyst and critical theorist, about her new book, Homo Psyche: On Queer Theory and Erotophobia(Fordham University Press, 2021). This book proceeds from the perplexing observation that for all of its political agita, rhetorical virtuosity, and intellectual restlessness, queer theory conforms to a model of erotic life that is psychologically conservative and narrow. Even after several decades of combative, dazzling, irreverent queer critical thought, the field remains far from grasping that sexuality’s radical potential lies in its being understood as “exogenous, intersubjective and intrusive” (Laplanche). In particular, and despite the pervasiveness and popularity of recent calls to deconstruct the ideological foundations of contemporary queer thought, no study has as yet considered or in any way investigated the singular role of psychology in shaping the field’s conceptual impasses and politico-ethical limitations.

Through close readings of key thinkers in queer theoretical thought—Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Leo Bersani, Lee Edelman, Judith Butler, Lauren Berlant, and Jane Gallop—Homo Psyche introduces metapsychology as a new dimension of analysis vis-à-vis the theories of French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche, who insisted on “new foundations for psychoanalysis” that radically departed from existing Freudian and Lacanian models of the mind. Staging this intervention, Ashtor deepens current debates about the future of queer studies by demonstrating how the field’s systematic neglect of metapsychology as a necessary and independent realm of ideology ultimately enforces the complicity of queer studies with psychological conventions that are fundamentally erotophobic and therefore inimical to queer theory’s radical and ethical project.

Britt Edelen is a Ph.D. student in English at Duke University. He focuses on modernism and the relationship(s) between language, philosophy, and literature. You can find him on Twitter or send him an email.

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Joel Whitebook, "Freud: An Intellectual Biography" (Cambridge UP, 2017) Nov 17, 2021

We interview Dr. Joel Whitebook, philosopher and psychoanalyst about his book Freud: An Intellectual Biography(Cambridge UP, 2017). Dr. Whitebook works in Critical Theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, developing that tradition with his clinical and philosophical knowledge of recent advances in psychoanalytic theory.

The life and work of Sigmund Freud continue to fascinate general and professional readers alike. Joel Whitebook here presents the first major biography of Freud since the last century, taking into account recent developments in psychoanalytic theory and practice, gender studies, philosophy, cultural theory, and more. Offering a radically new portrait of the creator of psychoanalysis, this book explores the man in all his complexity alongside an interpretation of his theories that cuts through the stereotypes that surround him. The development of Freud's thinking is addressed not only in the context of his personal life, but also in that of society and culture at large, while the impact of his thinking on subsequent issues of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and social theory is fully examined. Whitebook demonstrates that declarations of Freud's obsolescence are premature, and, with his clear and engaging style, brings this vivid figure to life in compelling and readable fashion.

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Darian Leader, "Jouissance: Sexuality, Suffering and Satisfaction" (Polity Press, 2021) Nov 12, 2021

Although the term 'jouissance' is common currency in psychoanalysis today, how much does it really tell us? While often taken to designate a fusion of sexuality, suffering and satisfaction, the term has fallen into a purely descriptive use that closes down more questions than it opens up. Although assumed to explain the coalescence of pleasure and pain, it tends to cover a range of quite different issues that should be distinguished rather than conflated.

By returning to some of its sources in Freud and elaborations in Lacan, Darian Leader's Jouissance: Sexuality, Suffering and Satisfaction (Polity Press, 2021) hopes to stimulate a debate around the relations of pleasure to pain, autoerotism, the links of satisfaction to arousal, the effects of repression, and the place of the body in psychoanalytic theory. Unlike other studies in Lacanian psychoanalysis, it aims to contextualise Lacan's work and encourage dialogue with other analytic traditions.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com.

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Steven Knoblauch, "Bodies and Social Rhythms: Navigating Unconscious Vulnerability and Emotional Fluidity" (Routledge, 2020) Oct 20, 2021

Steven Knoblauch's Bodies and Social Rhythms: Navigating Unconscious Vulnerability and Emotional Fluidity (Routledge, 2020) traces the development of an unfolding challenge for psychoanalytic attention, which augments contemporary theoretical lenses focusing on structures of meaning, with an accompanying registration different than and interacting with structural experience. This accompanying registration of experience is given the term ‘fluidity’ in order to characterize it as too fast moving and unformulated to be symbolized with linguistic categorization.

Expanding attention from speech meaning to include embodied registrations of rhythm involving tonality, pauses and accents can catalyze additional and often emotionally more significant communications central to the state of the transactional field in any psychoanalytic moment. This perspective is contextualized within recognition of how cultural practices and beliefs are carried along both structural and fluid registrations of experience and can shape emotional turbulence for both interactants in a clinical encounter. Experiences of gender, culture, class and race emerging as sources of conflict and mis-recognition are engaged and illustrated throughout the text.

This book, part of the popular "Psychoanalysis in a New Key" book series, will appeal to teaching and practicing psychoanalysts, but also an increasing volume of therapists attending to embodied experience in their practice and drawn to the practical clinical illustrations.

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Hannah Zeavin, "The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy" (MIT Press, 2021) Oct 14, 2021

On this episode, J.J. Mull interviews author Hannah Zeavin about her new book, The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy(MIT Press, 2021). Among Zeavin’s central interventions in the book is to reframe what is normally understood as the “therapeutic dyad” as always already a triad: therapist, patient, and mediating communication technology. Across the book’s chapters, she traces teletherapy’s history from Freud’s epistolary treatments to contemporary algorithmic therapies. Her account of the “distanced intimacy” characteristic of all therapeutic encounters complicates narratives of technologically mediated treatments as somehow inherently “less than.”

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Heinz Weiss, "Trauma, Guilt and Reparation: The Path from Impasse to Development" (Routledge, 2019) Oct 13, 2021

Trauma, Guilt and Reparation: The Path from Impasse to Development (Routledge, 2019) identifies the emotional barriers faced by people who have experienced severe trauma, as well as the emergence of reparative processes which pave the way from impasse to development. The book explores the issue of trauma with particular reference to issues of reparation and guilt. Referencing the original work of Klein and others, it examines how feelings of persistent guilt work to foil attempts at reparation, locking trauma deep within the psyche. It provides a theoretical understanding of the interplay between feelings of neediness with those of fear, wrath, shame and guilt, and offers a route for patients to experience the mourning and forgiveness necessary to come to terms with their own trauma. The book includes a Foreword by John Steiner. Illustrated by clinical examples throughout, it is written by an author whose empathy and experience make him an expert in the field. The book will be of great interest to psychotherapists, social workers and any professional working with traumatized individuals.

Heinz Weiss, M.D., is the Head of the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine at the Robert Bosch Hospital in Stuttgart. He is also the head of the Medical Division and member of the directorate of the Sigmund-Freud-Institute, Frankfurt/Main, and Chair of the Education Section of The International Journal of Psychoanalysis

Philip Lance, PhD, is a psychoanalyst in Los Angeles. You can contact him at philipjlance@gmail.com.

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Gillian Straker and Jacqui Winship, "The Talking Cure: Normal People, their Hidden Struggles and the Life-Changing Power of Therapy" (Macmillan, 2019) Oct 12, 2021

Gillian Straker’s name has long been on my radar, particularly for the ways in which she has used psychoanalytic thought to contend with the vicissitudes of apartheid and its aftermath in her home country, South Africa. But she has also made use of what apartheid taught her about the human mind. Indeed, there is much for psychoanalysis to learn from apartheid.

For over 20 years, Straker has published, largely in relational journals, about racism, and the ways in which living under the extremes of racist duress take their particular toll. (It is high time for those articles to be collected and published.) Straker begins with trauma and dissociation—and the work of thinkers like Donnell Stern on unformulated experience gird some of her thinking. But she also turns to minds outside the field as well to elaborate certain ideas that pertain to fetishism, morality, mutuality, and perversion—foremost among them Bourdieu, Butler and Bhabha.

Straker’s reflections on her own capacity to block from consciousness the damning impact of apartheid provides a guidepost for all her theorizing. This is an author who knows of what she speaks, and to read her is to be immersed in both her vulnerability and her searching intellect. Perhaps her two most eye-opening articles—“Race for Cover: Castrated Whiteness, Perverse Consequences” and “A Crisis in the Subjectivity of the Analyst: The Trauma of Morality”—could perhaps only have been written by someone living under apartheid. And yet, I find them useful for thinking about working in an interracial analytic couple. By the time she wrote her most unique theoretical contribution, “The Anti-Analytic Third”, one feels that she wants to warn white analysts, or heterosexual analysts to avoid taking politically correct positions when working with black or queer patients and to not back off from engaging with pathological conflicts that they may bring into the consulting room. Identity politics (and the patient’s desire to “know” if the analyst is “like” her at the level of social identity) can create a kind of noxious ethos that “opposes analysis.” Indeed, bending the frame for a patient because one feels a guiltiness does more harm than good. An especial contribution of hers is to help analyst’s think about working with difference in politically charged situations. Given that in this moment, at least in the United States, from where I am writing, the psychoanalytic world seems to be attempting a reckoning with its own racism, Straker reminds us that leading with guilt will not help anyone—black or white—to make the best use of the clinical encounter.

Gillian Straker has also recently co-authored The Talking Cure: Normal people, their Hidden Struggles and the Life-Changing Power of Therapy (Macmillan, 2019) with Dr. Jacqui Winship, designed to reach a popular audience, enticing them to take to the couch, and serves as the supervisor on a newly created podcast on psychoanalytic supervision titled Three Associating.

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Sheldon George and Derek Hook, "Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory" (Routledge, 2021) Oct 08, 2021

Derek Hook and Sheldon George's Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2021) is a path-breaking edited volume that draws upon Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to examine the conscious and unconscious forces underlying race as a social formation. In my conversation with Derek and Sheldon, touching on the main themes of the volume, we explore the problems with popular psychological conceptualisations of racism, the promises and pitfalls of bringing Lacanian concepts like jouissance to bear on historical phenomena, and the possibility of a Lacanian anti-racist politics.

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Allan V. Horwitz, "DSM: A History of Psychiatry's Bible" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021) Sep 24, 2021

Over the past seventy years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has evolved from a virtually unknown and little-used pamphlet to an imposing and comprehensive compendium of mental disorder. Its nearly 300 conditions have become the touchstones for the diagnoses that patients receive, students are taught, researchers study, insurers reimburse, and drug companies promote. Although the manual is portrayed as an authoritative corpus of psychiatric knowledge, it is a product of intense political conflicts, dissension, and factionalism. The manual results from struggles among psychiatric researchers and clinicians, different mental health professions, and a variety of patient, familial, feminist, gay, and veterans' interest groups. The DSM is fundamentally a social document that both reflects and shapes the professional, economic, and cultural forces associated with its use.

In DSM: A History of Psychiatry's Bible (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021), Allan V. Horwitz examines how the manual, known colloquially as "psychiatry's bible," has been at the center of thinking about mental health in the United States since its original publication in 1952. The first book to examine its entire history, this volume draws on both archival sources and the literature on modern psychiatry to show how the history of the DSM is more a story of the growing social importance of psychiatric diagnoses than of increasing knowledge about the nature of mental disorder. Despite attempts to replace it, Horwitz argues that the DSM persists because its diagnostic entities are closely intertwined with too many interests that benefit from them.

This comprehensive treatment should appeal to not only specialists but also anyone who is interested in how diagnoses of mental illness have evolved over the past seven decades—from unwanted and often imposed labels to resources that lead to valued mental health treatments and social services.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch.

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Mary-Jayne Rust, "Towards an Ecopsychotherapy" (Confer Books, 2020) Sep 08, 2021

Towards an Ecopsychotherapy (Confer Books, 2020) provides an overview of ecopsychology and introduces the newly emerging field of ecopsychotherapy, including insightful case examples for practitioners. However, ecopsychotherapy is not simply a technique to be applied in therapy; for practitioner and client, it involves a change in perspective. Rust gives a solid introduction to this evolving work, with a critical eye and a deep awareness of the quickening impacts of climate change.

Mary Jayne Rust is an ecopsychologist, art therapist, and Jungian analyst. Her numerous publications include the timely book VItal Signs: Psychological Response to Ecological Crisis. She grew up by the sea and now lives and works overlooking ancient woodlands in North London.

Dr. Susan Grelock Yusem is an independent researcher trained in depth psychology, with an emphasis on community, liberation, and eco-psychologies. Her work centers around interconnection and encompasses regenerative food systems, the arts and conservation.

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Roy Richard Grinker, "Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness" (Norton, 2021) Sep 01, 2021

Stigma about mental illness makes life doubly hard for people suffering from mental or emotional distress. In addition to dealing with their conditions, they must also contend with social shame and secrecy. But by examining how mental illness is conceived of and treated in other cultures, we can improve our own perspectives in the Western world. In his new book, Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness (Norton, 2021), anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker offers a critique of our current mental health system based on cross-cultural observations as well as suggestions for improving upon it. In our interview, we talk about the impact of stigma on mental health treatment and his ideas about where it comes from. He also explains why he feels optimistic about recent trends in the way individuals speak about their mental health challenges.

Roy Richard Grinker is professor of anthropology and international affairs at George Washington University. His specialties include ethnicity, nationalism, and psychological anthropology, with topical expertise in autism, Korea, and sub-Saharan Africa. He is also the director of George Washington University’s Institute for Ethnographic Research and editor-in-chief of the journal Anthropological Quarterly. He is author of several books, including Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism. He lives in Washington, DC.

Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute in Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology in New York City and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group; and faculty at Florida Psychoanalytic Institute in Miami. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (2018, Routledge) and has published on issues of gender, sexuality, and sexual abuse.

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Susan Evans and Marcus Evans, "Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults" (Phoenix, 2021) Aug 09, 2021

Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults (Phoenix Publishing House, 2021) by Susan and Marcus Evans is an uncomfortable book on the politically and clinically contested subject of gender dysphoria in young people. From their psychoanalytically informed perspective, gender dysphoria is a developmental disorder that looks to control ordinary developmental processes by employing primitive psychological mechanisms, much like a psychic retreat in John Steiner's sense. By firmly asserting basic psychoanalytical tenets like the inevitability of psychic pain in coming to terms with the developing sexual body or the need to take psychodynamic account of so called comorbidities, they question a one-size-fits-all affirmative approach to adolescent gender dysphoria and the wish to transition. Rather they offer a model of psychotherapeutic treatment for the complex difficulties faced by some gender-dysphoric teens that they elaborate in a rich array of case descriptions. There are many issues with their approach that are being discussed in the interview: What is the use of offering psychotherapy, let alone psychoanalysis, to a population that wants no part of it? How do we stay in an analytic position of curiosity, doubt and uncertainty when faced with demands to act either in favor or against medical transitioning? And why do they focus almost exclusively on de-transitioners in their clinical narrative? Listen to the conversation to hear their perspective on these and other problems.

Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de.

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Gabriel Tupinambá, "The Desire of Psychoanalysis: Exercises in Lacanian Thinking" (Northwestern UP, 2021) Jul 26, 2021

What does psychoanalysis want? In The Desire of Psychoanalysis: Exercises in Lacanian Thinking(Northwestern UP, 2021), analyst and academic Gabriel Tupinambá takes the Lacanian world to task for failing to properly address this question and, in so doing, both overestimating the field's political applicability, and undervaluing the role of analysands, contributing to the socio-economic and racial inequalities that plague the discipline. In our interview, Tupinambá introduces us to some of the major themes of his strikingly original book, alongside a discussion of how his experiments in political work in Brazil have informed his thinking.

Jordan Osserman is a postdoctoral research fellow and psychoanalyst in training in London. He can be reached at jordan.osserman@gmail.com.

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Scott Krzych, "Beyond Bias: Conservative Media, Documentary Form, and the Politics of Hysteria" (Oxford UP, 2021) Jul 23, 2021

Scott Krzych's bookBeyond Bias: Conservative Media, Documentary Form, and the Politics of Hysteria(Oxford University Press, 2021) offers the first scholarly study of contemporary right-wing documentary film and video. Drawing from contemporary work in political theory and psychoanalytic theory, the book identifies what author Scott Krzych describes as the hysterical discourse prolific in conservative documentary in particular, and right-wing media more generally.

In our chat, Scott and I review the development of conservative documentaries and discuss the various frameworks used to present ideas, as well as specific methods used to present information.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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Patricia Gherovici and Christopher Christian, "Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious" (Routledge, 2018) Jul 21, 2021

Psychoanalysis began as a politicized form of treatment for people from all walks of life. Yet in the United States, it has become divorced from these roots and transformed into a depoliticized treatment for the most well-to-do, according to my guests, Drs. Patricia Gherovici and Christopher Christian. Their edited book, Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious (Routledge, 2018), returns psychoanalysis to its social activist origins, with special emphasis on its urgency and usefulness for Latinx patients, including the poor. In our interview, we discuss the possibilities and necessity for bringing psychoanalysts to the barrios, as well as the unique offerings the barrio might have for psychoanalysis.

Patricia Gherovici, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Philadelphia and New York, an analytic supervisor, and a recipient of the 2020 Sigourney Award for her clinical and scholarly work with Latinx and gender variant communities. Her single-authored books include The Puerto Rican Syndrome (Other Press: 2003) winner of the Gradiva Award and the Boyer Prize, Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of Transgenderism (Routledge: 2010) and Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference (Routledge: 2017).

Christopher Christian, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New Haven, CT and co-editor of the book Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Conflict with Morris Eagle and David Wolitzky. He is also co-editor with Michael J. Diamond of the book The Second Century of Psychoanalysis: Evolving Perspectives on Therapeutic Action. He serves as dean of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (aka IPTAR), where he is also a supervising and training analyst. And he was co-executive producer of the documentary Psychoanalysis in El Barrio.

Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute in Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology in New York City and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group; and faculty at Florida Psychoanalytic Institute in Miami. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (2018, Routledge) and has published on issues of gender, sexuality, and sexual abuse.

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Sharon L. Coggan, "Sacred Disobedience: A Jungian Analysis of the Saga of Pan and the Devil" (Lexington Books, 2020) Jul 13, 2021

Pan plays a central role in European mythology, originating as a figure who represented all that was impossible to tame in the world, something anyone who has ever worked with goats will understand. This primitive origin was slowly assimilated by the Greeks as a celebration of life and vitality, although through Plato’s radical dualism and the moral inflection introduced by Christianity, his transition from goatlike deity to devil leaves us with a complicated relationship today towards everything he represented, giving birth to a collection of complexes and pathologies that demand addressing. Joining me to discuss these ideas is Sharon Coggan, here to discuss her new book Sacred Disobedience: A Jungian Analysis of the Saga of Pan and the Devil (Lexington Books, 2020).

Synthesizing Jungian psychology with the history of mythology and theology, Coggan works her way through the history of Pan as a way of thinking about the development of various forms of consciousness, both individual and social. This is then a history of myth and religion, but with the goal of developing a psychological and sociological diagnosis, and thinking about what sort of cure might be called for.

Sharon Coggan is a recently retired professor who spent much of her career at the University of Colorado in Denver, and founded the Religious Studies Program where she served as director for many years.

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Steven Kuchuck, "The Relational Revolution in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy" (Confer Books, 2021) Jul 13, 2021

The relational revolution led to what is arguably the most radical revision of our understanding of how to effect healing and change in the mind since Freud’s ground-breaking work more than a century ago. In The Relational Revolution in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (Confer Books, 2021), Steven Kuchuck addresses core theories as well as newer, cutting edge trends within relational psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. This book defines postmodern relational concepts, and offers a clear, thoughtfully curated examination of relationality and its impact on psychoanalytic technique for both experienced clinicians and those newer to the field.

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stef m. shuster, "Trans Medicine: The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender" (NYU Press, 2021) Jun 30, 2021

A rich examination of the history of trans medicine and current day practice Surfacing in the mid-twentieth century, yet shrouded in social stigma, transgender medicine is now a rapidly growing medical field. In Trans Medicine: The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender (NYU Press, 2021), stef shuster makes an important intervention in how we understand the development of this field and how it is being used to “treat” gender identity today. Drawing on interviews with medical providers as well as ethnographic and archival research, shuster examines how health professionals approach patients who seek gender-affirming care. From genital reconstructions to hormone injections, the practice of trans medicine charts new medical ground, compelling medical professionals to plan treatments without widescale clinical trials to back them up. Relying on cultural norms and gut instincts to inform their treatment plans, shuster shows how medical providers’ lack of clinical experience and scientific research undermines their ability to interact with patients, craft treatment plans, and make medical decisions. This situation defies how providers are trained to work with patients and creates uncertainty. As providers navigate the developing knowledge surrounding the medical care of trans folk, Trans Medicine offers a rare opportunity to understand how providers make decisions while facing challenges to their expertise and, in the process, have acquired authority not only over clinical outcomes, but over gender itself.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. She teaches and writes about health behavior in historical context.

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Camille Robcis, "Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France" (U Chicago Press, 2021) Jun 28, 2021

On this episode, J.J. Mull interviews scholar and historian Camille Robcis. In her most recent book, Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France(University of Chicago Press, 2021), Robcis grapples with the historical, intellectual, psychiatric and psychoanalytic meaning of institutional psychotherapy as articulated at Saint-Alban Hospital in France by exploring the movement’s key thinkers, including François Tosquelles, Frantz Fanon, Félix Guattari, and Michel Foucault. Anchored in the history of one hospital, Robcis's study draws on a wide geographic context—revolutionary Spain, occupied France, colonial Algeria, and beyond—and charts the movement's place within a broad political-economic landscape, from fascism to Stalinism to postwar capitalism.

J.J. Mull is a poet, training clinician, and graduate student at Smith College School for Social Work currently living in Northampton, MA. He can be reached at jmull@smith.edu.

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C. Owens and S. Swales (Part 2), "Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with Freud and Lacan: On and Off the Couch" (Routledge, 2019) Jun 24, 2021

This is part two of a two part interview with Carol Owens and Stephanie Swales about their book Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with Freud and Lacan: On and Off the Couch (Routledge, 2019)

Taking a deep dive into contemporary Western culture, this book suggests we are all fundamentally ambivalent beings. A great deal has been written about how to love - to be kinder, more empathic, a better person, and so on. But trying to love without dealing with our ambivalence, with our hatred, is often a recipe for failure. Any attempt, therefore, to love our neighbour as ourselves - or even, for that matter, to love ourselves - must recognise that we love where we hate and we hate where we love. Psychoanalysis, beginning with Freud, has claimed that to be in two minds about something or someone is characteristic of human subjectivity. Owens and Swales trace the concept of ambivalence through its various iterations in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis in order to question how the contemporary subject deals with its ambivalence. They argue that experiences of ambivalence are, in present-day cultural life, increasingly excised or foreclosed, and that this foreclosure has symptomatic effects at the individual as well as social level. Owens and Swales examine ambivalence as it is at work in mourning, in matters of sexuality, and in our enjoyment under neoliberalism and capitalism. Above all, the authors consider how today's ambivalent subject relates to the racially, religiously, culturally, or sexually different neighbour as a result of the current societal dictate of complete tolerance of the other. In this vein, Owens and Swales argue that ambivalence about one's own jouissance is at the very roots of xenophobia. Peppered with relevant and stimulating examples from clinical work, film, television, politics, and everyday life, Psychoanalysing Ambivalence breathes new life into an old concept and will appeal to any reader, academic, or clinician with an interest in psychoanalytic ideas.

Carol Owens, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst and psychoanalytic scholar in Dublin, Ireland. She edited The Letter: Perspectives in Lacanian Psychoanalysis (2003–2008), Lacanian Psychoanalysis with Babies, Children and Adolescents: Further Notes on the Child (with Stephanie Farrelly Quinn, Routledge, 2017) and Studying Lacan’s Seminars IV and V: From Lack to Desire (with Nadezhda Almqvist, Routledge, 2019). She is the series editor for the newly established Routledge series, Studying Lacan’s Seminars.

Stephanie Swales, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Dallas, USA, a practicing psychoanalyst, a licensed clinical psychologist, and a clinical supervisor located in Dallas, Texas. Her first book, Perversion: A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Approach to the Subject, was published by Routledge in 2012.

Christopher Russell is a Psychoanalyst in Chelsea, Manhattan.

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C. Owens and S. Swales (Part 1), "Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with Freud and Lacan: On and Off the Couch" (Routledge, 2019) Jun 23, 2021

This is part one of a two part interview with Carol Owens and Stephanie Swales about their book Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with Freud and Lacan: On and Off the Couch (Routledge, 2019)

Taking a deep dive into contemporary Western culture, this book suggests we are all fundamentally ambivalent beings. A great deal has been written about how to love - to be kinder, more empathic, a better person, and so on. But trying to love without dealing with our ambivalence, with our hatred, is often a recipe for failure. Any attempt, therefore, to love our neighbour as ourselves - or even, for that matter, to love ourselves - must recognise that we love where we hate and we hate where we love. Psychoanalysis, beginning with Freud, has claimed that to be in two minds about something or someone is characteristic of human subjectivity. Owens and Swales trace the concept of ambivalence through its various iterations in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis in order to question how the contemporary subject deals with its ambivalence. They argue that experiences of ambivalence are, in present-day cultural life, increasingly excised or foreclosed, and that this foreclosure has symptomatic effects at the individual as well as social level. Owens and Swales examine ambivalence as it is at work in mourning, in matters of sexuality, and in our enjoyment under neoliberalism and capitalism. Above all, the authors consider how today's ambivalent subject relates to the racially, religiously, culturally, or sexually different neighbour as a result of the current societal dictate of complete tolerance of the other. In this vein, Owens and Swales argue that ambivalence about one's own jouissance is at the very roots of xenophobia. Peppered with relevant and stimulating examples from clinical work, film, television, politics, and everyday life, Psychoanalysing Ambivalence breathes new life into an old concept and will appeal to any reader, academic, or clinician with an interest in psychoanalytic ideas.

Christopher Russell is a Psychoanalyst in Chelsea, Manhattan.

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George Szmukler, "Men in White Coats: Treatment Under Coercion" (Oxford UP, 2017) Jun 09, 2021

The laws that govern psychiatric treatment under coercion have remain largely unchanged since the eighteenth century. But this is not because of their effectiveness, rather, these laws cling to outdated notions of disability, mental illness and mental disorder why deny the fundamental rights of this category of people on an equal basis with all others. In Men in White Coats: Treatment Under Coercion(Oxford University Press, 2017) Professor George Szmukler examines the violation of these rights, such as the right to autonomy, self-determination, liberty, and security and integrity of the person in the context of the domestic laws which themselves perpetuate ongoing discrimination against people with mental impairments.

Tracing first the history of the medical coercion and involuntary treatment of people with mental illnesses and mental disorders, Professor Szmukler offers a potential path which he argues would end discrimination against this category of people. He puts forward a legal framework which is non-discriminatory and is based on a person's decision-making abilities and best interests, as opposed to a diagnosis. Crucially, he argues that this law is generic, and would not apply by reason of a person's mental disorder. His solution - Fusion Law - would better support people's autonomy, better engage with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and have significant social value by recognising the dignity and equality of people with mental health impairments. It would also have implications for the forensics system, in particular, with regards to defendants who have mental disorders.

Professor George Szmukler is a psychiatrist who started practising in the field as a trainee in 1972. He retired from clinical work in 2012, and is now an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Society at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's college London. His major research now concerns methods of reducing compulsion and ’coercion’ in psychiatric care, for example, through the use of ’advance statements’. A related interest is mental health law, particularly the possibility of generic legislation centred on impaired decision-making capacity which would apply to all persons, regardless of the cause of the underlying disturbance of mental functioning.

Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK

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Neil Altman, "White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives" (Routledge, 2020) Jun 08, 2021

Neil Altman’s White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (Routledge, 2020) is a slip (80 pages including references and the index) of a book that reads as both addendum and antidote to some of the literature aimed at waking white people (Ta-Nahesi-Coates’ “dreamers”) up to the realities of racism. I say antidote as some of that literature (the work of Robin Di Angelo and Ibram X. Kendi come to mind) seems to depend on commands from the super ego to shed the scales from white eyes. On finishing Di Angelo’s White Fragility (which was required reading last summer) I felt both paranoid and ashamed and had to wonder how self-policing was going diminish my racism? Altman’s book intervenes precisely in this potentially deleterious cycle arguing that anti-racist thinking that relies on “should” and “oughts”, are potentially doomed to fail. By attacking the defenses rather than softening them, such efforts run the risk of hardening the racism they set out to transform.

Humans hate. Freud tells us it is our first feeling. Undeniably, hating can fill us with great and solidifying pleasure. Racism is one form of hatred. When acted on, it can and does destroy lives. Fully loaded with white privilege, white people are apt to act on our racism, and also to shudder, deny or dissociate when encountering our racist thoughts and feelings. When confronted with our racism and its impact, with our awareness that we in fact rely on denigrating stereotypes to feel a little better about ourselves, states of mortification (deathliness) emerge that do no one any good. Such a state is a purely narcissistic one where the other has been snuffed out. If you are white, as I am, you have likely found yourself more than once tossing the hot potato of your own racism as far away as from yourself as you can. And some part of you feels weakened by being this way but it is practically an involuntary reflex.

Thinking about this reflex, Altman employs Melanie Klein’s thinking about what it means to be human, which highlights our ineluctable destructiveness. If hate is a human feeling, not one to be gotten rid of but rather one to be accepted and contended with, there may be a way for us to take responsibility for being hurtful, for being racist. Hating hate or hating our racism can maintain the status quo. In fact, hidden hateful feelings seek justification and become reified, rather than being fleeting—as all feelings truly are.

Altman highlights the difference between making reparations based on guilt versus the descent into guiltiness. Guilt implies that one is interested in our impact on others because we know that in living, we will hurt many people along the way. Guiltiness, which we can see in white virtue signaling around racism, has much more to do with returning the self that has harmed to its happy and perfect place without addressing the harm done. While white people are primed, particularly in an American context, to say and do horrible and hurtful racist things, it is the disavowal of the destructiveness that perhaps does, from a psychoanalytic perspective, the most harm in the end. Altman quotes the journalist Leonard Pitts who captures the experience of white negation succinctly, writing, “If people who hate you would stand up and declare it you would not have to go through with your day on guard against the world.”

The refusal to take responsibility for the harm we do—and Altman makes the strong point that whiteness can be defined as an identity that is principally based on dehumanization—keeps white people on the run from reality. When we depend on delusions to shore us up, a part of us knows we are in real bad shape.

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Galit Atlas, "When Minds Meet: The Work of Lewis Aron" (Routledge, 2020) Jun 04, 2021

When Minds Meet: The Work of Lewis Aron (Routledge, 2020) offers a sampling of Lewis Aron's most important contributions to relational psychoanalysis.

One of the founders of relational thinking, Aron was an internationally recognized psychoanalyst, sought after teacher, lecturer, and the Director of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. His pioneering work introduced and revolutionized the concepts of mutuality, the analyst's subjectivity, and the paradigm of mutual vulnerability in the analytic setting. During the last few years of his life, Aron was exploring the ethical considerations of writing psychoanalytic case histories and the importance of self-reflection and skepticism not only for analysts with their patients, but also as a stance towards the field of psychoanalysis itself. Aron is known for his singular, highly compelling teaching and writing style and for an unparalleled ability to convey complex, often comparative theoretical concepts in a uniquely inviting and approachable way. The reader will encounter both seminal papers on the vision and method of contemporary clinical practice, as well as cutting edge newer writing from the years just before his death. Edited and with a foreword by Galit Atlas, each chapter is preceded by a new introduction by some of the most important thinkers in our field: Jessica Benjamin, Michael Eigen, Jay Greenberg, Adrienne Harris, Stephen Hartman, Steven Kuchuck, Thomas Ogden, Joyce Slochower, Donnel Stern, Merav Roth, Chana Ullman, and Aron himself.

This book will make an important addition to the libraries of experienced clinicians and psychoanalytic scholars already familiar with Aron's work, as well as students, newer professionals or anyone seeking an introduction to relational psychoanalysis and one of its most stunning, vibrant voices.

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Sergio Benvenuto, "Conversations with Lacan: Seven Lectures for Understanding Lacan" (Routledge, 2019) Jun 03, 2021

Conversations with Lacan: Seven Lectures for Understanding Lacan (Routledge, 2019)brings a unique, non-partisan approach to the work of Jacques Lacan, linking his psychoanalytic theory and ideas to broader debates in philosophy and the social sciences, in a book that shows how it is possible to see the value of Lacanian concepts without necessarily being defined by them.

In accessible, conversational language, the book provides a clear-sighted overview of the key ideas within Lacan’s work, situating them at the apex of the linguistic turn. It deconstructs the three Lacanian orders – the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real – as well as a range of core Lacanian concepts, including alienation and separation, après-coup, and the Lacanian doctrine of temporality. Arguing that criticism of psychoanalysis for a lack of scientificity should be accepted by the discipline, the book suggests that the work of Lacan can be helpful in re-conceptualizing the role of psychoanalysis in the future.

This accessible introduction to the work of Jacques Lacan will be essential reading for anyone coming to Lacan for the first time, as well as clinicians and scholars already familiar with his work. It will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and scholars of philosophy and cultural studies.

Cassandra B. Seltman is a writer, psychoanalyst, and researcher in New York City. cassandraseltman@gmail.com

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Mitchell Wilson, "The Analyst’s Desire: The Ethical Foundation of Clinical Practice" (Bloomsbury, 2020) May 28, 2021

In The Analyst’s Desire: The Ethical Foundation of Clinical Practice (Bloomsbury, 2020), Mitchell Wilson explores the fundamental role that lack and desire play in psychoanalytic interpretation by using a comparative method that engages different psychoanalytic traditions: Lacanian, Bionian, Kleinian, Contemporary Freudian. Investigating crucial questions Wilson asks: What is the nature of the psychoanalytic process? How are desire and counter-transference linked? What is the relationship between desire, analytic action, and psychoanalytic ethics?

Mitchell Wilson is a training and supervising analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, USA. While in medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, he obtained a postgraduate degree in English Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied the early English novel and Lacanian theory. He has been a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, and has served on the editorial boards of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Currently, he is Editor-in-Chief of JAPA.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles. He can be reached at philipjlance@gmail.com.

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Gavin Arnall, "Subterranean Fanon: An Underground Theory of Radical Change" (Columbia UP, 2020) May 25, 2021

In this episode, J.J. Mull interviews Gavin Arnall, author of Subterranean Fanon: An Underground Theory of Radical Change(Columbia University Press, 2020). Arnall traces an internal division throughout Fanon’s work between two distinct modes of thinking about change. He contends that there are two Fanons: a dominant Fanon who conceives of change as a dialectical process of becoming and a subterranean Fanon who experiments with an even more explosive underground theory of transformation. In this conversation, Arnall touches on various Fanonian traditions and what they have to tell us about contemporary psychiatric and psychoanalytic practice.

J.J. Mull is a poet, training clinician, and graduate student at Smith College School for Social Work living in Northampton, MA. He can be reached at jmull@smith.edu.

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Daniel Jose Gaztambide, "A People's History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology" (Lexington Books, 2021) May 11, 2021

In this episode, host J.J. Mull interviews Daniel José Gaztambide about his book, A People’s History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology (Lexington Books, 2021). The project traces a global intellectual lineage spanning from the first generation of analysts in Europe to Harlem, the Caribbean, and finally, to Latin America. Challenging a broader cultural narrative that conceives of psychoanalysis as somehow fundamentally “white” or euro-centric, Gaztambide presents a radical and politicized version of psychoanalytic thought inherited and expanded by thinkers like Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire and Ignacio Martín-Baró.

J.J. Mull is a poet, training clinician, and graduate student at Smith College School for Social Work living in Northampton, MA. He can be reached at jmull@smith.edu

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Jack Black, "Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy: A Psychoanalytic Exploration" (Routledge, 2021) Apr 28, 2021

Jack Black, Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy (Routledge 2021). In what ways is comedy subversive? This vital new book critically considers the importance of comedy in challenging and redefining our relations to race and racism through the lens of political correctness.

On this episode of New Books Network, your host Lee M. Pierce (they) interviews author Jack Black (he) about psychoanalysis, PC culture, The Office, and the subversive potential of comedy to change our collective experience. Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy engages with the social and cultural tensions inherent to our understandings of political correctness, arguing that comedy can subversively redefine our approach to ‘PC debates’, contestations surrounding free speech and the popular portrayal of political correctness in the media and society. Aided by the work of both Slavoj Žižek and Alenka Zupančič, this unique analysis adopts a psychoanalytic/philosophical framework to explore issues of race, racism and political correctness in the widely acclaimed BBC ‘mockumentary’, The Office (UK), as well as a variety of television comedies. Jack Black is a Senior Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. After completing his postgraduate studies at Loughborough University, his research has continued to explore the interrelationships between sociology, media and communications and cultural studies.

The clip from The Office discussed in the interview is here.

Connect with Jack on Twitter @jackstblack and with Lee @rhetoriclee.

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Monnica T. Williams, "Managing Microaggressions: Addressing Everyday Racism in Therapeutic Spaces" (Oxford UP, 2020) Apr 05, 2021

Microaggressions have been identified as a common and troubling cause of low retention and poor psychotherapy outcomes for people of color. All therapists want and intend to be helpful to their clients, but many unknowingly committing microaggressions due to unconscious biases and misconceptions about people from ethnic and racial minority groups.

Managing Microaggressions: Addressing Everyday Racism in Therapeutic Spaces(Oxford UP, 2020) is intended for mental health clinicians who want to be more effective in their use of evidence-based practices with people of color. Many well-intentioned clinicians lack the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively engage those who are ethnoracially different. This book discusses the theoretical basis of the problem (microaggressions), the cognitive-behavioral mechanisms by which the problem is maintained, and how to remedy the problem using CBT principles, with a focus on the role of the therapist. Not only will readers learn how to avoid offending or harming their clients, they will also be better equipped to help clients navigate microaggressions they encounter in their daily lives. Managing Microaggressions will endow clinicians with a clear understanding of these behaviors and the errors that underpin them, leading to more successful therapy.

Debbie Sorenson is a psychologist in Denver and the host of the podcast Psychologists Off the Clock.

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Lucas Richert, "Break on Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture" (MIT Press, 2020) Apr 05, 2021

"Antipsychiatry," Esalen, psychedelics, and DSM III: Radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s. The upheavals of the 1960s gave way to a decade of disruptions in the 1970s, and among the rattled fixtures of American society was mainstream psychiatry. A "Radical Caucus" formed within the psychiatric profession and the "antipsychiatry" movement arose. Critics charged that the mental health establishment was complicit with the military-industrial complex, patients were released from mental institutions, and powerful antipsychotic drugs became available. Meanwhile, practitioners and patients experimented with new approaches to mental health, from primal screaming and the therapeutic use of psychedelics to a new reliance on quantification.

In Break on Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture (MIT Press, 2020), Lucas Richert investigates the radical challenges to psychiatry and to the conventional treatment of mental health that emerged in the 1970s and the lessons they offer for current debates. Drawing on archives and government documents, medical journals, and interviews, and interweaving references to pop (counter)culture into his account, Richert offers fascinating stories of the decade's radical mental health practices. He discusses anti-Vietnam War activism and the new diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder given to some veterans; the radical psychiatrists who fought the system (and each other); the entry of New Age-style therapies, including Esalen's Human Potential Movement, into the laissez-faire therapeutic marketplace of the 1970s; the development of DSM III; and the use of LSD, cannabis, and MDMA. Many of these issues have resonance today. Debates over medical marijuana and microdoses of psychedelics echo debates of the 1970s. With rising rates of such disorders as anxiety and depression, practitioners and patients continue to search for therapeutic breakthroughs.

C.J. Valasek is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology & Science Studies at the University of California San Diego.

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Arnold W. Rachman, "Elizabeth Severn: The 'Evil Genius' of Psychoanalysis" (Routledge, 2017) Mar 16, 2021

Elizabeth Severn: The 'Evil Genius' of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2017) chronicles the life and work of Elizabeth Severn, both as one of the most controversial analysands in the history of psychoanalysis, and as a psychoanalyst in her own right. Condemned by Freud as "an evil genius", Freud disapproved of Severn’s work and had her influence expelled from the psychoanalytic mainstream. In this book, Rachman draws on years of research into Severn to present a much-needed reappraisal of her life and work, as well as her contribution to modern psychoanalysis.

Arnold Rachman’s re-discovery, restoration and analysis of the Elizabeth Severn Papers – including previously unpublished interviews, books, brochures and photographs – suggests that, far from a failure, that the analysis of Severn by Ferenczi constitutes one of the great cases in psychoanalysis, one that was responsible a new theory and methodology for the study and treatment of trauma disorder, in which Severn played a pioneering role.

Elizabeth Severn should be of interest to any psychoanalyst looking to glean fresh light on Severn’s progressive views on clinical empathy, self-disclosure, countertransference analysis, intersubjectivity and the origins of relational analysis.

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M. Fakhry Davids, "Internal Racism: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Race and Difference" (Red Globe, 2011) Mar 16, 2021

What makes racist feelings and ideas objectionable? In his book Internal Racism: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Race and Difference (Red Globe, 2011), M. Fakhry Davids, a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, argues that racism, like the impulse to destroy or act on hatred, is an ineluctable part of us all. Borrowing, but also augmenting the work of his fellow neo-Kleinians (particularly John Steiner and Herbert Rosenfeld) on “psychic retreats” and “defensive organizations”, he names the “internal racist organization” as a normal part of the mind, deeming it a non-pathological component of psychic structure.

Davids' thinking has a decidedly hopeful tinge. If accepted, it promises to help open up the kinds of conversations clinically and otherwise that can be had about racist feelings. After all, if they are average and expectable, they are human. And what is accepted as human can potentially be talked through and about, which promises to constrain harmful action.

What I love about Davids' thinking is that in updating a psychoanalytic model of mind that accounts for racism, he wipes political correctness and the super ego off the table. By placing the “internal racist organization” as an equal player inside of us, alongside the Oedipal, the ego and the id, it becomes something that you just can’t wish away.

That said, if we accept his argument, we do find ourselves contending with the age old problem of the drives, or the paranoid schizoid, wherein managing ourselves in relation to the lure of destructiveness (of which racist feelings play their part) is a life long project. The hope is that if we can come to accept racist thinking as a response to overwhelming and primitive anxieties, (rather than a moral failing), we can see it as a warning sign that internally we are askew. Following Davids, racism can never be expunged (as seems to be the neoliberal fantasy) from the self. In fact, and truly this is the last word, it follows us to the grave.

Tracy D. Morgan: Psychoanalyst, LCSW-R, M.Phil., Editor, New Books in Psychoanalysis.

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W. Pearson and H. Marlo, "The Spiritual Psyche in Psychotherapy: Mysticism, Intersubjectivity, and Psychoanalysis" (Routledge, 2020) Mar 15, 2021

W. Pearson and H. Marlo's The Spiritual Psyche in Psychotherapy: Mysticism, Intersubjectivity, and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2020) examines the interaction of spiritual and psychoanalytic lineages with psychotherapy in everyday practice. Written by a team of seasoned clinicians and illustrated through clinical vignettes, chapters explore topics pertaining to the mystical dimensions of psychological and spiritual life and how it may be integrated into clinical practice.

Topics discussed include dreams, dissociation, creativity, therapeutic relationship, free association, transcendence, poetry, paradox, doubleness, loss, death, grief, mystery, embodiment and soul. The authors, clinicians with decades of experience in psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and spiritual practice, draw from their deep engagement with spirituality and psychoanalysis, focusing on a particular theme and its application to clinical work that is supported by the generative conversation among these lineages. At once applied and theoretical, this book weaves insights from the heart of Vajrayana Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Christianity, Catholicism, Ecumenicism, Integral Spirituality, Judaism, Kabbalah, Non-violence, Sufism and Vedanta. They are in conversation with psychoanalytic perspectives including Jungian, Post-Jungian, Winnicottian, Bionian, Post-Bionian and Relational.

A felt sense of the spiritual psyche in clinical practice emerges from this conversation among spiritual and psychoanalytic lineages, beckoning clinicians ever further on the path of spiritually rooted, psychodynamic practice.

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Brett Kahr, "How to Flourish as a Psychotherapist" (Phoenix, 2018) Mar 09, 2021

Brett Kahr has done it again! He has given us a marvelous book, helpful, yet challenging, fun to read, yet digging deep. In How to Flourish as a Psychotherapist (Phoenix Publishing House, 2018) he takes us on a journey through the life cycle of the psychoanalyst – from first thoughts about training and the basic personal requirements for a life in the mental health professions to thriving inside and outside of the consulting room to packing up your practice at the end of your career. In his typical lucid and accessible style, he gives generous examples from his own path to show us how we can make the most of our life in the field. But this trip is not for the faint of heart: Professor Kahr is a demanding tour guide, urging us to dive deep into the work and taking seriously our scholastic history, a paternal voice that tells us about the amazing things we can do with our specialized knowledge – if we apply ourselves and work hard. As any paternal voice ought to in this day and age, the book will surely provoke strong reactions in many readers and listeners. Join us for an in-depth discussion of the book and the profession.

This interview was conducted in front of an online live audience as part of a new series of events hosted by the Free Association, a group of psychoanalytic candidates based in the beautiful city of Lisbon, Portugal, creating innovative opportunities of continuous learning in the field of psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. This conversation is part of a new format titled „Forward“, in which I interview exciting psychoanalytic scholars about their work. After the interview – and this is special about Forward - there is an extended discussion with the audience, which you will not hear in this recording. Check out the website of the Free Association for future events at

www.freeassociation.pt.

Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de.

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Leon S. Brenner, "The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) Feb 17, 2021

Leon Brenner's The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) makes a forceful case for the relevance of Lacanian psychoanalysis in the understanding and treatment of autism. Refusing both cognitive and identitarian approaches to the topic, Brenner rigorously theorizes autism as a unique mode of subjectivity and relation to language that sits alongside the classical Freudian structures of psychosis, neurosis, and perversion. In this interview, Brenner dispels misconceptions around psychoanalysis "blaming the mother," as we explore his conceptualisation of autistic subjectivity alongside clinical examples.

Jordan Osserman is a postdoctoral research fellow and psychoanalyst in training in London. He can be reached at jordan.osserman@gmail.com.

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Paul Ian Steinberg, "Psychoanalysis in Medicine: Applying Psychoanalytic Thought to Contemporary Medical Care" (Routledge, 2020) Feb 12, 2021

In today’s program, Dr. Paul Steinberg, a psychiatrist and clinical professor at the University of British Columbia, discusses his recently released book Psychoanalysis in Medicine: Applying Psychoanalytic Thought to Contemporary Medical Care (Routledge, 2020).

In this new volume, Dr. Steinberg offers both theoretical inferences and practical guidance related to the application of psychoanalysis to medical practice. Dr. Steinberg provides insight on, among many other topics, how clinicians’ awareness of their own feelings can aid in the diagnostic process and how a psychoanalytic approach can enrich patient interview.

Alec Kacew is a medical school student at the University of Chicago.

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Sheldon George, "Trauma and Race: A Lacanian Study of African American Racial Identity" (Baylor UP, 2016) Feb 03, 2021

In his book, Trauma and Race: A Lacanian Study of African American Racial Identity (Baylor UP, 2016), Sheldon George treats an old idea--that African Americans must transform their relationship to the history of slavery and to their identification with race—in an entirely new way.

What follows is a quite truncated encapsulation of the book’s central argument which I will attempt if only because it struck me as a very original use of Lacanian thought. It also produced something I value very much: the development of fresh ideas for this psychoanalyst to ponder.

George argues that owning human property, slaves, offered a surplus of "jouissance" to slave owners. Meanwhile the enslaved, denuded of family, of history and claims to nationality, were often valued solely for muscle mass and fecundity. Psychically emptied--seen only for their capacity to serve the master's needs, and I want to add, also emptying preemptively, and defensively their psychic lives, enslaved people were forbidden access to being, from which flows, following Lacan, crucial early fantasies of a wholeness that must be shattered if one is to become subjectivized. Fantasies of repletion provide a kind of protective “crested shield" with which to endure the rough first brush with the Symbolic.

Living under a racist, white animating Master Signifier, slaves were often absent of the requisite psychic buffering with which to enter the Symbolic without undue suffering. Barred from the rudiments of being and lacking a constructive Master Signifier from which to generate vitalizing associations, the gaze of the enslaved was horrifyingly riveted to the “very lack that is masked in the Lacanian subject,” (p.21). Here George offers an apt description of what the sociologist of slavery, Orlando Patterson, refers to as "social death."

Rather than celebrate the ways in which the burden of “double consciousness” aided African Americans in generating new linguistic vistas, we find no fan of Henry Louis Gates Jr’s “signifying monkey” here. George declares the project of "resignification" as not going far enough, and crucially, as missing the impact of the unconscious on language. Arguing against a powerful trend in African-American studies to value African-American racial identity as such, George boldly declares, “insistences on race perform a rite, an endless repeated act as a means to commemorate the not very memorable encounter that I call the trauma of slavery.” (p.42) How, George asks, can one have an identity based on insult, negation, and injury? Following his argument, the lure of racial pride loses its force majeur. Suddenly we see it as but papering over a potentially productive encounter with lack. And if it is lack that must be faced so as to open the door to a life driven by enlivening, elusive yet worthwhile desire, at what cost is it avoided?

The idea of having love of the race and “the race man” become rather quickly tragic in George’s intellectual hands. Furthermore, embracing the narrative that “we come from slavery”, like Sethe in Toni Morrison's Beloved, (a novel George writes beautifully about in this text) one is quickly cornered, metonymically, by the suffocating relationship between race and enslavement. The need for the space to metaphorize is undeniable.

To learn more about the work of Sheldon George, please go here.

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Marian Dunlea, "Bodydreaming in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma: An Embodied Therapeutic Approach" (Routledge, 2019) Jan 27, 2021

Winner the 2019 NAAP Gradiva Award and Co- Winner of International Association for Jungian Studies Awards Program for Best Books published in 2019, Marian Dunlea’s BodyDreaming in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma: An Embodied Therapeutic Approach (Routledge, 2019) provides a theoretical and practical guide for working with early developmental trauma. This interdisciplinary approach explores the interconnection of body, mind and psyche, offering a masterful tool for restoring balance and healing developmental trauma. BodyDreaming is a somatically focused therapeutic method, drawing on the findings of neuroscience, analytical psychology, attachment theory and trauma therapy.

In Part I, Dunlea defines BodyDreaming and its origins, placing it in the context of a dysregulated contemporary world. Part II explains how the brain works in relation to the Body Dreaming approach: providing an accessible outline of neuroscientific theory, structures and neuroanatomy in attunement, affect regulation, attachment patterns, transference and countertransference, and the resolution of trauma throughout the body. In Part III, through detailed transcripts from sessions with clients, Dunlea demonstrates the positive impact of Body Dreaming on attachment patterns and developmental trauma. This somatic approach complements and enhances psychobiological, developmental and psychoanalytic interventions. Body Dreaming restores balance to a dysregulated psyche and nervous system that activates our innate capacity for healing, changing our default response of “fight, flight or freeze” and creating new neural pathways. Dunlea’s emphasis on attunement to build a restorative relationship with the sensing body creates a core sense of self, providing a secure base for healing developmental trauma.

Marian Dunlea M.Sc., IAAP, ICP, is a Jungian analyst and somatics practitioner who has been leading workshops internationally for the past 25 years integrating body, mind and soul. She is head of the BodySoul Europe Training, which is part of the Marion Woodman Foundation. She is creator of BodyDreaming an approach which incorporates developments in neuroscience, trauma therapy, and attachment theory with Jungian psychology, and the phenomenological standpoint of interconnectedness. Her trainings include Jungian Analysis, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Psychosynthesis Psychotherapy, Infant Observation Supervision, and Somatic Experiencing.

Christopher Russell is a Psychoanalyst in Chelsea, Manhattan.

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Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau, "Memory's Eyes: A New York Oedipus Novel" (Ipbooks, 2020) Jan 20, 2021

Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau'sMemory’s Eyes is a contemporary New York Oedipus novel. It is written for readers who enjoy playing with concepts and storylines, here namely the classical Oedipus myth, Sophocles’ three Theban plays, the psychoanalytical concept of the Oedipus complex, and its pop-cultural adaptations in cartoons and jokes. Tragic and funny, playful, but also challenging, readers will find themselves simultaneously knowing and not knowing, anticipating and surprised by how the truth slowly emerges.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com and his website address is https://www.drphiliplance.com.

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Jeanne Safer, "I Love You, but I Hate Your Politics: How to Protect Your Intimate Relationships in a Poisonous Partisan World" (Bitback, 2019) Jan 11, 2021

We’ve all been there – the family dinners turned full-fledged political debates, the awkward chat in the kitchen at work, the difficulty of discussing politics on a first date or even at dinner with a long-time partner. Today’s divisive climate – and the seemingly neverending circus of Brexit – has made discussion of current events uncomfortable and often uncivil. So, how exactly do we find ways to reach across the aisle to those whose views we find unpalatable?

Psychotherapist and lifetime liberal Jeanne Safer hopes to shed some light on the situation. Combining her professional expertise with personal experience gleaned from over forty years of happy marriage to her stalwart conservative husband Richard Brookhiser, as well as a wealth of interviews with politically mixed couples, Safer offers frank advice for salvaging and strengthening relationships strained by political differences.

Part relationship guide, part anthropological study, I Love You, but I Hate Your Politics: How to Protect Your Intimate Relationships in a Poisonous Partisan World (Bitback, 2019) is a helpful and entertaining how-to for anyone who has felt they are walking on eggshells in these increasingly uncertain times.

Ian J. Drake is Associate Professor of Jurisprudence, Montclair State University.

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Roy E. Barsness, "Core Competencies of Relational Psychoanalysis: Core Competencies of Relational Psychoanalysis: A Guide to Practice, Study, and Research" (Routledge, 2018) Jan 07, 2021

Core Competencies of Relational Psychoanalysis: A Guide to Practice, Study, and Research (Routledge, 2018) provides a concise and clearly presented handbook for graduate students, experienced clinicians, supervisors, and professors, presenting analytic technique with as clear a frame and purpose as evidence-based models, and a gateway into further study in Relational Psychoanalysis.

Barsness offers his own research on technique, and grounds these methods with superb contributions from several master clinicians, expanding the seven core competencies: therapeutic intent; therapeutic stance; analytic listening; relational dynamics; patterning and linking; conflict and courageous speech through disciplined spontaneity. Each of these skills are presented in a straightforward and useable format.

Core Competencies of Relational Psychoanalysis is inspired by Barsness’ students where he was motivated to create a text to better understand the complexities of working with the relational psychoanalytic relationship.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com and his website address is https://www.drphiliplance.com.

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Jonathan Sadowsky, "The Empire of Depression: A New History" (Polity, 2020) Jan 05, 2021

When is sorrow sickness? That is the question that this book asks, exploring how our understandings of sadness, melancholy, depression, mania and anxiety have changed over time, and how societies have tried to treat something which lies on the border between the natural and the pathological. Jonathan Sadowsky's book The Empire of Depression: A New History (Polity, 2020) explores the various medical treatments for depression, classed as a modern illness with definite (but changing) symptoms from the 20th century onwards, in relation to a longer history of treatments for ‘melancholia’ and related states considered either as biological or social sicknesses or as a natural part of some people’s constitution. He also compares the western history of medicalising depression with the experiences of both sadness and clinical depression in non-western cultures, such as Nigeria and Japan. He asks, what have we lost as a consequence of the hegemony of the western clinical model, and how can we reclaim the patient experience in the face of sometimes hostile doctors and pharmaceutical companies? The book is poetic but well-researched, written by a leading medical historian, and distinguished from the crowd of books about depression through its global focus, and its historical rigour.

C.J. Valasek is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology & Science Studies at the University of California San Diego.

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Siri Erika Gullestad and Bjørn Killingmo, "The Theory and Practice of Psychoanalytic Therapy: Listening for the Subtext" (Routledge, 2019) Dec 31, 2020

“She is seated in her chair, quietly anticipative. She is in no hurry. There is nothing that has to be achieved. She does not charge the situation with her temper. On the contrary, she is turned towards the other, listening attentively – present in the contact, though with no traces of intimacy or fervency. She is fairly softly spoken, yet clear and factual. A benevolent, lightly questioning tone characterizes her voice. No gestures, no jargon, no implicit jokiness, no sideward glances, no hidden implications. She upholds simplicity of words and expressions.”

This impressionistic image of the analyst at work is a condensed starting point for the journey that Siri Erika Gullestad and Bjørn Killingmo take us on with their recently published The Theory and Practice of Psychoanalytic Therapy: Listening for the Subtext (Routledge, 2019). They draw from decades of experience as analysts and university professors of clinical psychology at the University of Oslo to give a theoretically grounded account of their flavor of psychoanalysis, which they call “relational-oriented character analysis”. Making use of ego psychology, object relations theory and concepts of embodiment, they arrive at an approach to therapy that values form over content, the latent over the manifest. In the process, they differentiate between psychopathological developments stemming from conflict and deficit and formulate therapeutic principles that take account of the patient’s level of ego functioning and actualized affect at any given moment.

However, the result of their work is much more than yet another textbook of psychoanalysis. At every turn, we are invited into the consulting room to listen to verbatim protocols of sessions and to get a feeling of the affect in the room. This book is a treasure trove of clinical experience and a rare possibility to look over the analyst’s shoulder.

Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de.

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Mark Gerald, "In the Shadow of Freud's Couch: Portraits of Psychoanalysts in Their Offices" (Routledge, 2020) Dec 30, 2020

Psychotherapy offices are typically thought of as existing in the background of treatment, but they are brought to the foreground in Mark Gerald’s new bookIn the Shadow of Freud’s Couch: Portraits of Psychoanalysts in Their Office(Routledge, 2020). In this beautifully written book, illustrated with pictures of psychoanalysts in their offices from around the world, psychoanalyst and photographer Mark Gerald explores the stories offices tell about their holders and their role in the transformations experienced by patients. In our interview, we discuss why he became involved in this decades-long photography project and what he learned along the way about the powerful interface of psyche and physical space.

Mark Gerald is a practicing psychoanalyst and trained photographer based in the USA who has written, presented, and taught widely about the visual dimension of psychoanalysis. He is a faculty member of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies, the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, and the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy.

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Trevor C. Pederson, "Psychoanalysis and Hidden Narrative in Film: Reading the Symptom" (Routledge, 2018) Dec 28, 2020

Psychoanalysis and Hidden Narrative in Film: Reading the Symptom(Routledge, 2018) proposes a way of constructing hidden psychological narratives of popular film and novels. Instead of offering interpretations of classic films, Trevor C. Pederson recognizes that the psychoanalytic tradition began with making sense of the seemingly inconsequential. Here he turns his attention to popular films like Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys (1987). While masterworks like Psycho (1960) are not the object of interpretation, Hitchcock's film is used as a skeleton key. The revelation that Norman Bates' character had been his mother all along, suggests a framework of reading a film as having symptom characters who are excised to create a latent plot. The symptom character's behavior or inter-relations are then transcribed to an ego character. This is a shift in the tradition of literary doubling from hermeneutic intuition to a formal methodology that generates data for the unconscious.

Pederson continues the project of unifying competing schools into a single model of mind and offers clinical examples from his own practice for all its terms. Psychodynamic techniques that emphasize the importance of working with the body, the id, and the ubiquity of repetition are introduced. A return to Freud's structural theory, in which complexes are anchored in the stages of superego development, is used to carefully plot and explain the social nature of the superego and its relation to authority in society (secondary narcissism) and the otherworldly (primary narcissism). Discrete phases of superego development and their ties to both the social and the id revive the grand promises of classical psychoanalysis to link with every field in the humanities.

Psychoanalysis and Hidden Narrative in Film will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists as well as scholars of film studies and literature interested in using a psychoanalytic approach and ideas in their work.

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L. Layton and M. Leavy-Sperounis, "Toward a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious Processes" (Routledge, 2020) Dec 18, 2020

In this episode, J.J. Mull interviews Lynne Layton and Marianna Leavy-Sperounis, author and editor respectively of Toward a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious Processes, published in 2020 by Routledge as a part of their Relational Perspectives Book Series. This text takes part in an intellectual and political lineage that has called for a more radical understanding of psychoanalysis, encompassing a diverse range of thinkers from Frantz Fanon and Pierre Bourdieau to Eric Fromm and Marie Langer. In this compilation of Layton’s work, we’re given a framework for understanding the intersection between structural forces (gender oppression, racial capitalism, white supremacy, etc.) and the clinical encounter. Over the course of this conversation, Layton and Leavy-Sperounis give an account of the ways in which neoliberalism, capitalism, and other systems of domination give rise to particular kinds of subjective possibilities and gesture towards what psychoanalysis as a field might have to learn from contemporary struggles and insurrections.

J.J. Mull is a poet, training clinician, and graduate student at Smith College School for Social Work living in Northampton, MA. He can be reached at jmull@smith.edu.

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John Campbell, "Causation in Psychology" (Harvard UP, 2020) Dec 10, 2020

Our practices of holding people morally and legally responsible for what they do rests on causal relationships between our mental states and our actions – a desire for revenge or a fear for one’s safety may cause a violent act. In either case, John Campbell argues, there is a psychological causal process that leads from the motivating mental state to the action. In Causation in Psychology (Harvard University Press, 2020), Campbell – who is professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, claims that the existence of such singular causal relations and our knowledge of them do not depend on the existence of psychological generalizations under which they might be subsumed. Moreover, imaginative understanding or empathy enables us to trace these one-off, idiosyncratic causal sequences and thereby attain knowledge of these singular psychological causal relations. Campbell uses his analysis to distinguish human freedom of action at the level of causal process and to provide a new perspective on the traditional mind-body problem.

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Jack Drescher, "Psychotherapeutic Engagements With LGBTQ+ Patients and Their Families" (American Psychiatric Association, 2020) Dec 10, 2020

In this episode, Philip Lance interviews Jack Drescher, a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who is an expert in psychotherapy with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender patients. The interview focuses on a recently published series articles about LGBT mental health in an online journal of the American Psychiatric Association. The LGBT population group is heterogeneous, meaning that differences among the members of this group are as important as the similarities. In many ways, psychotherapy for this group does not differ from psychotherapy for heterosexual, gender conforming, and cisgender patients, however, concepts and considerations that arise in psychotherapy with LGBT patients can parallel issues that arise in psychotherapy with patients of other stigmatized minority groups. In this interview, the author discusses the concept of minority stress and its relationship with mental health conditions and reviews specific issues that may arise, including being in the closet, coming out of the closet, the psychotherapeutic search for “causes” of sexual orientation and gender identity, and therapist self-disclosure.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com and his website is here.

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Fred Busch, "Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind: A Psychoanalytic Method and Theory" (Routledge, 2013) Dec 07, 2020

Bringing a fresh contemporary Freudian view to a number of current issues in psychoanalysis, this book is about a psychoanalytic method that has been evolved by Fred Busch over the past 40 years called Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind: A Psychoanalytic Method and Theory (Routledge, 2013). It is based on the essential curative process basic to most psychoanalytic theories—the need for a shift in the patient’s relationship with their own mind. Busch shows that with the development of a psychoanalytic mind, the patient can acquire the capacity to shift the inevitability of action to the possibility of reflection.

Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind is derived from an increasing clarification of how the mind works that has led to certain paradigm changes in the psychoanalytic method. While the methods of understanding the human condition have evolved since Freud, the means of bringing this understanding to patients in a way that is meaningful have not always followed. Throughout, Fred Busch illustrates that while the analyst’s expertise is crucial to the process, the analyst’s stance, rather than mainly being an expert in the content of the patient’s mind, is primarily one of helping the patient to find his own mind.

Fred Busch is a Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and Society. He has published 5 books and over 70 papers. His work has been translated into multiple languages.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com and his website is here.

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Frederick Crews, "Freud: The Making of an Illusion" (Picador, 2018) Nov 25, 2020

The figure of Sigmund Freud has captivated the Western imagination like few others. One hundred and twenty-five years after the publication of Studies on Hysteria, the good doctor from Vienna continues to stir controversy in institutions, academic circles, and nuclear households across the world.

Perhaps Freud’s sharpest and most adamant critic, Frederick Crews has been debating Freud’s legacy for over thirty years. His latest work, Freud: The Making of an Illusion (Picador, 2018) challenges us with an extensive psychological profile of the legend here revealed as scam artist. What some analysts might argue to be a 750 page character assassination, Crews maintains is simply a recitation of facts which leaves readers to draw their own conclusions. One might wonder if the story of facts that is conveyed is not itself a counter myth.

Was Freud a megalomaniacal, greedy, cocaine-addled opportunist and psychoanalysis a pseudoscience that has reigned tyrannically over twentieth century thought? Making use of Freud’s extensive letters to Martha Bernays, Crews paints a “damning portrait” (Esquire) of a money hungry, adulterous, and uncaring man.

How can this portrait be reconciled with the radically meaningful and deeply transformative process many of us know psychoanalysis to be? Is the tyranny of rationality preferable to the tyranny of myth? Does the unmaking of the myth of the man undo the gift of his work?

In this interview Crews responds to questions of what it means to have an empirical attitude, how we should “test” the process of healing, what’s so tempting about Freud, and what should become of psychoanalysis today. Meticulously researched, the Crews of the Freud wars is back again, and he’s going in for the kill shot.

Cassandra B. Seltman is a writer, psychoanalyst, and researcher in NYC. cassandraseltman@gmail.com

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Rosamond Rhodes, "The Trusted Doctor: Medical Ethics and Professionalism" (Oxford UP, 2020) Nov 23, 2020

Common morality has been the touchstone of medical ethics since the publication of Beauchamp and Childress's Principles of Biomedical Ethics in 1979. Rosamond Rhodes challenges this dominant view by presenting an original and novel account of the ethics of medicine, one deeply rooted in the actual experience of medical professionals. She argues that common morality accounts of medical ethics are unsuitable for the profession, and inadequate for responding to the particular issues that arise in medical practice. Instead, Rhodes argues that medicine's distinctive ethics should be explained in terms of the trust that society allows to the profession. Trust is the core and starting point of Rhodes' moral framework, which states that the most basic duty of doctors is to "seek trust and be trustworthy."

In The Trusted Doctor: Medical Ethics and Professionalism (Oxford UP, 2020), Rhodes explicates the sixteen specific duties that doctors take on when they join the profession, and demonstrates how her view of these duties is largely consistent with the codes of medical ethics of medical societies around the world. She then explains why it is critical for physicians to develop the attitudes or "doctorly" virtues that comprise the character of trustworthy doctors and buttress physicians' efforts to fulfill their professional obligations. Her book's presentation of physicians' duties and the elements that comprise a doctorly character, together add up to a cohesive and comprehensive description of what medical professionalism really entails. Rhodes's analysis provides a clear understanding of medical professionalism as well as a guide for doctors navigating the ethically challenging situations that arise in clinical practice.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.

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Pilar Jennings, "To Heal a Wounded Heart: The Transformative Power of Buddhism and Psychotherapy in Action" (Shambala, 2017) Nov 10, 2020

Early on in her clinical practice, psychoanalyst Pilar Jennings was presented with a particularly difficult case: a six-year-old girl who, traumatized by loss, had stopped speaking. Challenged by the limitations of her training to respond effectively to the isolating effect of childhood trauma, Jennings takes the unconventional path of inviting her friend Lama Pema--a kindly Tibetan Buddhist monk who experienced his own life-shaping trauma at a very young age--into their sessions. In the warm therapeutic space they create, the young girl slowly begins to heal. The result is a fascinating case study of the intersection of Western psychology and Buddhist teachings. Pilar's To Heal a Wounded Heart: The Transformative Power of Buddhism and Psychotherapy in Action(Shambala, 2017) is for therapists, parents, Buddhists, or any of us who hold out the hope that even the deepest childhood wounds can be the portal to our capacity to love and be loved.

Dr. Yakir Englander is the National Director of Leadership programs at the Israeli-American Council. He also teaches at the AJR. He is a Fulbright scholar and was a visiting professor of Religion at Northwestern University, the Shalom Hartman Institute and Harvard Divinity School. His books are Sexuality and the Body in New Religious Zionist Discourse (English/Hebrew and The Male Body in Jewish Lithuanian Ultra-Orthodoxy (Hebrew). He can be reached at: Yakir1212englander@gmail.com

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Steven H. Knoblauch, "Bodies and Social Rhythms: Navigating Unconscious Vulnerability and Emotional Fluidity" (Routledge, 2020) Oct 27, 2020

Psychotherapy tends to be thought of as a verbal enterprise, wherein participants speak and construct meaning through words. However, much goes on between patient and therapist at an embodied, nonverbal level that deserves attention. This is the focus of the book Bodies and Social Rhythms: Navigating Unconscious Vulnerability and Emotional Fluidity (2020, Routledge), written by my guest, Dr. Steven H. Knoblauch. In his new book, he describes the way that cultural meaning can be inscribed and communicated in bodily gestures, and how being open to difference necessitates attention to these embodied registers. For our interview, Dr. Knoblauch unpacks his ideas and shares insights into the personal experiences that have shaped his work. This interview will be relevant for those interested in expanding their awareness of communication that happens outside of words.

Steven H. Knoblauch is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. He is a Clinical Adjunct Associate Professor at the Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New York University. His prior books are The Musical Edge of Therapeutic Dialogue (2000) and Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Adult Treatment (2005).

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Li Zhang, "Anxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy" (U California Press, 2020) Oct 22, 2020

The breathless pace of China’s economic reform has brought about deep ruptures in socioeconomic structures and people’s inner landscape. Faced with increasing market-driven competition and profound social changes, more and more middle-class urbanites are turning to Western-style psychological counseling to grapple with their mental distress. Anxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy (University of California Press, 2020) offers an in-depth ethnographic account of how an unfolding “inner revolution” is reconfiguring selfhood, psyche, family dynamics, sociality, and the mode of governing in post-socialist times. Li Zhang shows that anxiety—broadly construed in both medical and social terms—has become a powerful indicator for the general pulse of contemporary Chinese society. It is in this particular context that Zhang traces how a new psychotherapeutic culture takes root, thrives, and transforms itself across a wide range of personal, social, and political domains.

Suvi Rautio is a Course Lecturer at the University of Helsinki. As an anthropologist, her research seeks to deconstruct the social orderings of marginalized populations living in China to reveal the layers of social difference that characterize the nation today. She can be reached at suviprautio@gmail.com

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Jessica Gross, "Hysteria" (Unnamed Press, 2020) Sep 25, 2020

“But creative writers are valuable allies and their evidence is to be prized highly for they are apt to know a whole host of things between heaven and earth of which our philosophy has not yet let us dream.” Freud (1907)

Jessica Gross is a valuable ally. An intuitive reader of Freud her debut novel--Hysteria (Unnamed Press, 2020)--embraces Oedipal conflict, unconscious fantasy, and voracious sexuality. The narrator, a young woman living in current day Brooklyn, discovers Freud tending bar at a neighborhood haunt “perfect for making trouble” which she does and which Freud sees. He also sees her for a session on the couch. An analysand herself, Gross renders the treatment with such emotional precision that “delusion and dream” slip away and we eavesdrop on a highly relatable woman confronting overlapping desires. Throughout the novel, Gross’ generosity with her narrator is a sensitive illustration of “say everything” the fundamental request of analysis. It is a gift for anyone who has never had the experience nor been given the space to do so. It celebrates what it means to meet oneself as sexual being.

Jessica Gross is a writer whose nonfiction has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, Longreads, and The Paris Review Daily. She's received fellowships in fiction from the Yiddish Book Center and the 14th Street Y, and teaches fiction and nonfiction writing at Eugene Lang College at The New School. jessicargross.com

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Roger Kennedy, "The Power of Music: Psychoanalytic Explorations" (Phoenix House, 2020) Sep 10, 2020

Today I discussed why music so powerful in eliciting emotions with Roger Kennedy, the author of The Power of Music: Psychoanalytic Explorations (Phoenix Publishing House, 2020)

Now at The Child and Family Practice in London, Kennedy is a training analyst and past President of the British Psychoanalytical Society. This is his fourteenth book.

Topics covered in this episode include:

The ability of music to reward close listening because of qualities like movement and the web of interactions involved.
How music can draw on and has parallels to a range of situations, like “baby talk” sounds shared by mother and child, and the sounds animals make (especially in mating rituals).
Discussion of parallels between music and entering a dream state, rich with free association as opposed to a concrete, logically coherent “narrative”

Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his “Faces of the Week” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com.

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Marion Bower, "The Life and Work of Joan Riviere: Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality" (Routledge, 2018) Sep 02, 2020

Joan Riviere (1883-1962) is best known for her role in promoting the ideas of others. She came to prominence in the world of psychoanalysis as Freud’s favorite translator and Melanie Klein’s earliest and most loyal supporter.

In her new book The Life and Work of Joan Riviere: Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality (Routledge, 2018), Marion Bower puts Joan Riviere herself, the woman and the psychoanalyst, in the spotlight. She shows how Riviere made use of the latest psychoanalytic ideas in a highly creative and original way, expressing herself with clarity and emotional depth in seminal works about the inner life of female sexuality and treatment impasses. She was able to draw from a lifetime of challenging and fruitful experiences. After a childhood rife with emotional neglect, she stepped into the rich ferment of the dying Victorian era and came in touch with major progressive forces of the time like the suffragettes and the Society for Psychical Research. As a dressmaker’s apprentice, she was among the first wave of women entering the work force. When the shifting soil of her childhood proved unstable, she entered analysis with Ernest Jones and, after becoming an analyst, with Freud himself. This personal connection proved fortuitous to the newly formed British Psychoanalytic Society, as it provided a solid anchor against the dividing drift between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein.

Bower paints an intimate portrait of a woman with a stern and sometimes vitriolic public persona and a shy and fragile personality that was saved by her involvement in psychoanalysis. In her best moments she was able to bridge that gap in her psychoanalytic writing, revealing herself through her theoretical musings.

Marion Bower has trained as a teacher, social worker and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. She has worked for many years in the child mental health services, including the Tavistock Clinic, and has edited and co-edited four books on various applications of psychoanalysis. She is currently co-editing a book on sexual exploitation.

Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de.

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Mark Bork, Jr., "Don’t Be a Dick: Change Yourself, Change Your World" (Central Recovery Press, 2019) Aug 27, 2020

When we are hurt, we hurt others—yet when they hurt us back, we wonder why. This is one of the central phenomena addressed by Mark Bork, Jr. in his new book, Don’t Be a Dick: Change Yourself, Change Your World (Central Recovery Press).

He applies his psychoanalytic perspective towards understanding the deep-seated insecurities which drive us to treat others exactly as we wish not to be treated. Yet he also offers practical skills and insights for breaking the cycles that lead to our bad behavior which, in turn, invites ‘dickish’ behavior from others. In our interview, he shares about very personal experiences which served as inspiration for this book and breaks down his concepts so that we might all be better at not being ‘dicks.’ This interview will speak to anyone struggling to understand and overcome toxic behavior, in others or in oneself.

Mark Borg is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in New York City who has been in private practice for twenty-two years, and the coauthor of the books Irrelationship and its follow-up book, Relationship Sanity. He is also a community psychologist and founding partner of the Community Consulting Group who has written extensively about the intersection of psychoanalysis and community crisis intervention.

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Mark Winborn, "Jungian Analysis: Art and Technique" (Routledge 2019) Aug 25, 2020

Engaging with one’s patients is one of the most complicated aspects of being a psychoanalyst. Going well beyond simply processing information and spitting out a ready-made answer for them, it involves learning how to listen, slowly teasing out insights, speaking not only the right words but with the right tone, creating an environment where a trusting relationship can be fostered. While much of this comes with time and experience, much can be learned by thinking critically about the mechanics that go into good analytic practice.

Here to discuss some of these is my guest today, Mark Winborn, here to discuss his recent Interpretation in Jungian Analysis: Art and Technique (Routledge 2019). Placing interpretation at the center of the practice, Winborn develops the creative and expressive elements of analysis, the importance of being attentive to language, the ways metaphors can be used to engage at a deeper level, and how a connection can be forged between an analyst and analysand. Clearly written and filled with lots of useful examples, the book will be of interest not only to analysts looking to better understand their craft, but to anyone interested in learning how to make sense of oneself.

Mark Winborn is a Jungian psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist. He is a training analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, and also sits on the editorial board for both the Journal of Analytical Psychology and the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. He is also the author of Deep Blues: Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey (2011) and Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond (2014). He maintains a private practice in Memphis, Tennessee.

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M. Hennefeld and N. Sammond, "Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence" (Duke UP, 2020) Aug 07, 2020

From the films of Larry Clark to the feminist comedy of Amy Schumer to the fall of Louis C. K., comedic, graphic, and violent moments of abjection have permeated twentieth- and twenty-first-century social and political discourse.

The contributors to Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence(Duke University Press, 2020) move beyond simple critiques of abjection as a punitive form of social death, illustrating how it has become a contested mode of political and cultural capital—empowering for some but oppressive for others.

Escaping abjection's usual confines of psychoanalysis and aesthetic modernism, core to theories of abjection by thinkers such as Kristeva and Bataille, the contributors examine a range of media, including literature, photography, film, television, talking dolls, comics, and manga.

Whether analyzing how comedic abjection can help mobilize feminist politics or how expressions of abjection inflect class, race, and gender hierarchies, the contributors demonstrate the importance of competing uses of abjection to contemporary society and politics. They emphasize abjection's role in circumscribing the boundaries of the human and how the threats abjection poses to the self and other, far from simply negative, open up possibilities for radically new politics.

Maggie Hennefeld is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her Twitter handle is @magshenny.

Nicholas Sammond is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto.

Joel Tscherne is an adjunct history general studies professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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A Very Square Peg: A Podcast Series about Polymath Robert Eisler. Episode 7: The Christ Vision Jul 21, 2020

Robert Whitehead of London, a self-described “Business Man” who was “no Churchman and not a Jesus worshipper, much as I admire him,” wrote to Robert Eisler on New Year’s Eve of 1929, asking “if it is a frequent occurrence that men see The Christ; and are there occasions known when the visions are free from religiosity and at the same time full of life and power?” These questions came in light of Whitehead’s dramatic experience when he had seen a blazing vision of Christ in his home. In letters between the two men over the next few years, Eisler gave a startling psychoanalytic interpretation of the dream, which he eventually published. In this episode, I talk about Eisler’s only known attempt to psychoanalyze anyone else with psychoanalyst and religion scholar Marsha Hewitt.

Guest: Marsha Hewitt (Trinity College, University of Toronto)

Voice of Robert Eisler: Logan Crum

Additional voices: Logan Marshall

Music: “Shibbolet Baseda,” recorded by Elyakum Shapirra and His Israeli Orchestra.

Funding provided by the Ohio University Humanities Research Fund and the Ohio University Honors Tutorial College Internship Program.

Special thanks to the Warburg Institute.

Bibliography and Further Reading

Eisler, Robert. The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist According to Flavius Josephus’ Recently Rediscovered ‘Capture of Jerusalem’ and Other Jewish and Christian Sources. London: Methuen & Co, 1931.

———. “Eine Jesusvision des. 20 Jahrhunderts psychologisch untersucht.” Zeitschrift für Religionspsychologie 11 (1938): 14-41.

Associate Professor Brian Collins is the Drs. Ram and Sushila Gawande Chair in Indian Religion and Philosophy at Ohio University. He can be reached at collinb1@ohio.edu.

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Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel, "Holiness and Transgression Mothers of the Messiah in the Jewish Myth" (ASP, 2017) Jul 15, 2020

In this interview, Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel discusses her first book, Holiness and Transgression Mothers of the Messiah in the Jewish Myth, with Rachel Adelman. Translated by Eugene Matansky and published by Academic Studies Press in 2017, it was originally written in Hebrew as Kedeshot ukedoshot: Imahot hamashiah bamythos hayehudi (2014). The book engages with the female dynasty leading up to the House of David in the Hebrew Bible—specifically Lot and His Daughters (Genesis 19), Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38), and the Book of Ruth— and its influence on the Jewish Messianic Myth, from classic midrash to the Zohar.

Drawing on anthropology and psychoanalytic theory, Kaniel enhances our understanding of the connection between female transgression and redemption. She identifies a type-scene by motifs that these stories all share (near extinction, lack of knowing, seduction and transgression), addressing the question of agency or lack thereof, and the fundamental tension between sexuality and motherhood. She also traces the same motifs to the opening genealogy in the Gospel of Matthew and the story of Mary in Luke, and compares representations of "the mother of the Messiah" in Christian and Jewish imaginaire. Through the prism of gender studies that explore questions of femininity, motherhood and sexuality, the murky origins of the Messiah appear in a new light. This research intertwines close Jewish literary readings with comparative religion, psychoanalysis, and gender theory, expanding the ‘mythic gaps’ in classical Jewish sources. The book won the Pines, Lakritz and Warburg awards.

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Jamieson Webster, "Conversion Disorder: Listening to the Body in Psychoanalysis" (Columbia UP, 2018) Jun 19, 2020

What do psychoanalysts do with bodies, and what do they do with them now?

Jamieson Webster has been thinking and writing on these questions as they impact her in her practice and her life. In this interview, we explore her latest book, Conversion Disorder: Listening to the Body in Psychoanalysis, alongside her recent article in the New York Review of Books on her volunteer work in a hospital with the families of loved ones sick or dying from COVID-19.

Webster speaks about issues of time and waiting, her skepticism of the call to 'carry on', and the life-threatening and curative conversions that, she suggests, are the beating heart of psychoanalytic practice.

This interview is part of a series on Psychoanalysis and Time, produced in collaboration with Waiting Times, a multi-stranded research project on the temporalities of healthcare. Waiting Times is supported by The Wellcome Trust [205400/A/16/Z], and takes places across Birkbeck (University of London) and the University of Exeter. Learn more about the project by visiting whatareyouwaitingfor.org.uk, or follow us on twitter @WhatisWaiting.

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J. Weinberger and V. Stoycheva, "The Unconscious: Theory, Research, and Clinical Implications" (Guilford Press, 2019) Jun 15, 2020

The concept of the unconscious has a complicated place in the history of psychology. Many areas of study ignored or outright denied it for a long time, while psychoanalysis claimed it as one of its central tenets. More recently, many non-psychoanalytic researchers have addressed the unconscious, but under different names—automaticity, implicit memory and learning, and heuristics, among others. The result is a lack of consensus in psychology on what the unconscious is and how it bears on psychotherapy processes.

In their new book, The Unconscious: Theory, Research, and Clinical Implications (Guilford Press, 2019) authors Joel Weinberger and Valentina Stoycheva undertake to bring together the various lines of study concerning the unconscious in order to arrive at an integrated model of unconscious processes. In our interview, they discuss the urgency for writing this book, what we might learn from various models of unconscious processes, and how psychotherapy might be enhanced by their state-of-the-art findings. This interview will be illuminating and useful for mental health therapists, researchers, and anyone interested in how the mind works.

Joel Weinberger, Ph.D., is Professor in the Derner School of Psychology at Adelphi University and a founder of Implicit Strategies, which consults for political campaigns, nonprofits, and businesses.

Valentina Stoycheva, Ph.D., is a staff psychologist at Northwell Health in Bay Shore, New York, where she works with military service members, veterans, and their families. She is also a cofounder and director of Stress and Trauma Evaluation and Psychological Services (STEPS), a group practice that focuses on the integrative treatment of trauma.

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Claudia Luiz, "The Making of A Psychoanalyst: Studies in Emotional Education" (Routledge, 2018) Jun 05, 2020

The eight stories in The Making of A Psychoanalyst: Studies in Emotional Education (Routledge, 2018) are composites of clinical material highlighting familiar emotional conflicts found in treatment. Dr. Claudia Luiz invites the reader into session switch her as she demonstrates “how two human beings interact with each other to effect profound change.” Chapters do not start with reviews of theory and literature. They begin with patients. We are confronted with who they are, what they want, and their emotional impact on Dr. Luiz. We feel the immediacy of the patient’s needs and the pressures to fix something. We encounter Dr. Luiz, not as theorist looking for strategies, but as a clinician looking for “what might be required of her as a practitioner.” The dialogue between Dr Luiz and her patients is punctuated by endnotes where she shares the theories integrated into the chapter. Placing theories at the end of the chapter is an effective way of teaching because we’ve had the experience of being with the case as it unfolds. Working from a modern psychoanalytic approach Dr. Luiz Believes “the function of interpretation with its corollary penchant for insight is completely antiquated.” The job of the modern psychoanalyst is“to prepare our patients’ minds for self-discovery.”

Dr. Luiz is the first-place winner of the 2006 Phyllis W. Meadow Award for Excellence in Psychoanalytic Writing (published in the journal Modern Psychoanalysis) and first place winner of the 2008 Reader’s Digest Best Writer’s Website Award. And her essay “Catrina learns to breathe” is nominated this year for a NAAPGradiva Award. Dr Luiz is on the faculty of the Academy for Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis in Livingston, New Jersey, and has a private practice in New York City and Tarrytown, NY. She was last on the program in 2014 with her book Where’s My Sanity? Stories That Help.

Christopher Russell is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Chelsea, Manhattan. He can be reached at (212)260-8115

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Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) Jun 02, 2020

Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, and co-founder and chair of the World Science Festival. He is well known for his TV mini-series about string theory and the nature of reality, including the Elegant Universe, which tied in with his best-selling 2000 book of the same name. In this episode, we talk about his latest popular book Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe (Random House, 2020)

Until the End of Time gives the reader a theory of everything, both in the sense of a “state of the academic union”, covering cosmology and evolution, consciousness and computation, and art and religion, and in the sense of showing us a way to apprehend the often existentially challenging subject matter. Greene uses evocative autobiographical vignettes in the book to personalize his famously lucid and accessible explanations, and we discuss these episodes further in the interview. Greene also reiterates his arguments for embedding a form of spiritual reverie within the multiple naturalistic descriptions of reality that different areas of human knowledge have so far produced.

John Weston is a University Teacher of English in the Language Centre at Aalto University, Finland. His research focuses on academic communication. He can be reached at john.weston@aalto.fi and @johnwphd.

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Christina Griffin, "The Regulars’ Table Conversations with Ferenczi" (IP Books, 2018) May 29, 2020

From the Central Coast of California to Baden-Baden, Toronto, Siracusa, and Budapest, Christina Griffin's The Regulars’ Table: Conversations with Ferenczi (International Psychoanalytic Books, 2018) is about deep enduring friendships; then and now. Inspired by Ignotus’ eulogy for Ferenczi, Christina Griffin decided to emulate his experiments in thought transference. This experience of sitting wordlessly with a friend and “silent writing” is the catalyst for a great adventure from her home in California to the cafes of Budapest where Ferenczi once gathered with friends and colleagues at their regular table. In 1929 one of the regulars, Frigyes Karinthy wrote a short story, Chains where he introduced the concept of six degrees of separation. Through her receptivity as a psychoanalyst, Dr. Griffin allows for the “interruption of the uncanny”, explores the “consequences and fears of vanishing” and discovers that she is separated from Ferenczi and his regulars by fewer than six degrees. Mining the Ferenczi correspondence as well as the writings of novelists, poets, painters, psychoanalysts, playwrights, and musicians, Griffin reconstructs a world where she joins Ferenczi to satisfy their mutual interest in “all that was human” and the “mysterious process of living among others.”

Christopher Russell, LP is a psychoanalyst in Chelsea Manhattan.

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Adrienne Harris and Plinio Montagna, "Psychoanalysis, Law, and Society" (Routledge, 2019) May 26, 2020

The areas of the Law and psychoanalysis overlap in interesting and compelling fashion in the new book, Psychoanalysis, Law, and Society (Routledge, 2019) edited by Adrienne Harris and Plinio Montagna. The book is far reaching and covers where the law and psychoanalysis intersect in diverse areas such as family dynamics, feminism, philosophy and the environment. The authors included here are international experts with experience with the law and the consulting room. In this interview I was able to speak with several of them, Harris, Montagna, Laura Orsi and Elizabeth Allured, and we engaged in a lively discussion that also addresses the current Covid-19 crisis.

This is a relevant book that will help therapists to incorporate legal ideas and philosophy into their everyday clinical practice.

You can reach Christopher Bandini at @cebandini.

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Noëlle McAfee, "Fear of Breakdown: Psychoanalysis and Politics" (Columbia UP, 2019) May 22, 2020

In his classic essay on the fear of breakdown, Donald Winnicott famously conveys to a patient that the disaster powerfully feared has, in fact, already happened. Taking her cue from Winnicott, Noëlle McAfee’s Fear of Breakdown: Psychoanalysis and Politics(Columbia University Press, 2019), explores the implications of breakdown fears for the practice of democracy.

Democracy, as you may dimly recall, demands the capacity to bear difference, tolerate loss, and to speak into the unknown. Meanwhile we have come to live in a world where, if my clinical practice and personal life are any indication, people often prefer writing to speaking. Patients who want to make a schedule change--never a neutral event in psychoanalysis—write me. I say, addressing the resistance, “This is a talking cure. Get your money’s worth. Speak!” Among intimates, bad news is something I too often read about. I surmise that in speaking desire or conveying pain, a fantasized recipient is sought, an ideal listener, who, like a blow up doll lover can be invoked, controlled and then deflated at will.

Circling back to difference and loss, ideas that do not mirror our already existing thoughts find themselves batted out of the park to an elsewhere not worth enunciating. Cultivating a protective bubble—such a heartbreak right? It seems there is something about democracy that frightens the shit out of us.

Deploying the work of Winnicott, Klein, Green and Kristeva, Mcafee reminds us of our original loss—what she calls “plenum”. That loss, to the degree it is recognized, initiates our undoing. Mother’s other—be it her lover, her piano lessons, a visit to the dentist for a cavity—tears a hole in our emotional shield. In her wake, we cling to seemingly strong leaders, a father, or failing that potent ideologies reeking of misogyny, all the while hoping for compensation for an unfathomable loss.

Embedded within democracy lies the demand that we see other than ourselves. This demand challenges the thin-skinned among us. And all of us are thin-skinned from time to time. How to manage?

Mcafee adds her voice to the popular chorus of those practicing applied psychoanalysis and suggests we embrace mourning. It is an inarguable position yet also nice work if you can get it! Of course, with the original disaster elided, like sleepwalkers in our night fog, we will helplessly seek it out; worse, we will make it manifest, with a vengeance. What is not remembered gets repeated. Trapped in America, as I am, one wonders about democracy. What might lure us to revisit the sight of the disaster, “the thing itself’,” to quote Adrienne Rich, “and not the myth?”

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Nancy J. Chodorow, "The Psychoanalytic Ear and the Sociological Eye" (Routledge 2020) May 20, 2020

In The Psychoanalytic Ear and the Sociological Eye: Toward an American Independent Tradition (Routledge 2020) Professor Nancy J. Chodorow gives name and shape to an American middle group between the ego psychological and interpersonal approaches: The American Independent Tradition or intersubjective ego psychology. Through her careful exegesis of theoreticians like Hans Loewald, Erik Erikson and her contemporaries Warren Poland and James McLaughlin she is able to distill an analytic attitude in which the patient’s individuality takes front and center. We get a measured account of how her thinking about the American Independent Tradition evolved over the last two decades, about its "Americanness" and about a powerful approach to technique in which the patient becomes a centred unit by being centred upon.

Turning outward from the consulting room, the in-depth study of psychoanalytic theory is framed by a focus on a larger context, the connection between individuality and society. Chodorow advocates for a return to an interest in the social and social sciences in psychoanalytic thinking. At the same time, she rues the lack of attention within the social sciences to the serious study of individuals and individuality.

Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de.

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Fulvio Mazzacane, "Contemporary Bionian Theory and Technique in Psychoanalysis" (Routledge, 2018) May 13, 2020

Psychoanalytic theory has developed very rapidly in recent years across many schools of thought. One of the most popular builds on the work of Wilfred Bion. Fulvio Mazzacane's new book Contemporary Bionian Theory and Technique in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2018) provides a concise and comprehensive introductory overview of the latest thinking in this area, with additional contemporary theoretical influence from Freud, Klein and Winnicottian thought. Covering central psychoanalytic concepts such as transference, dreams and child analysis, this book provides an excellent introduction to he most important contemporary features of Bionian theory and practice.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com.

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Adrian Johnston, "Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism: The Outcome of Contemporary French Philosophy " (Northwestern UP, 2013) May 11, 2020

In the contemporary philosophical landscape, a variety of materialist ontologies have appeared, all wrestling with various political and philosophical questions in light of a post-God ontology. Entering into this discussion is Adrian Johnston, with his 3-volume Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism, an attempt to develop a systematic and thoroughly atheistic material ontology of the subject. The first volume, subtitled The Outcome of Contemporary French Philosophy (Northwestern University Press, 2013) looks at three recent French theorists, Jacques Lacan, Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillasoux, arguing that all three ultimately fail to maintain a consistent atheism, regularly relying on various supramaterial elements to hold their systems together. In doing so, the book attempts to clear the ground for a consistently materialist ontology to be pursued in the latter two volumes.

Adrian Johnston is chair and distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of New Mexico and a faculty member at the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute. He is the author of close to a dozen books, including among others Time Driven: Metapsychology and the Splitting of the Drive (Northwestern 2005) and Adventures in Transcendental Materialism: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers (Edinburgh 2014). He is also a co-editor of Northwestern University Press’ book series "Diaeresis," of which this trilogy is a contribution.

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Dominik Finkelde, "Excessive Subjectivity: Kant, Hegel, Lacan and the Foundations of Ethics" (Columbia UP, 2017) May 06, 2020

How are we to conceive of acts that suddenly expose the injustice of the current order? This is a question that has puzzled philosophers for centuries, and it’s the question that animates Dominik Finkelde’s book Excessive Subjectivity: Kant, Hegel, Lacan, and the Foundation of Ethics (Columbia University Press, 2017). The book looks at these three major thinkers, and the ways they saw subjects as being immersed in a particular set of ethical orientations, but also always with a subtle but profound potential to do something beyond what they might’ve thought possible. Dominik Finkelde is a professor of contemporary political philosophy and epistemology at the Munich School of Philosophy, and is also the author of Zizek Between Lacan and Hegel and Benjamin Reads Proust.

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Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) Apr 28, 2020

Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of scholarly essays devoted solely to the histories and legacies of this subject on North American campuses and in their Atlantic contexts. Gathering together contributions from scholars, activists, and administrators, the volume combines two broad bodies of work: (1) historically based interdisciplinary research on the presence of slavery at higher education institutions in terms of the development of proslavery and antislavery thought and the use of slave labor; and (2) analysis on the ways in which the legacies of slavery in institutions of higher education continued in the post–Civil War era to the present day.

The collection features broadly themed essays on issues of religion, economy, and the regional slave trade of the Caribbean. It also includes case studies of slavery’s influence on specific institutions, such as Princeton University, Harvard University, Oberlin College, Emory University, and the University of Alabama. Though the roots of Slavery and the University stem from a 2011 conference at Emory University, the collection extends outward to incorporate recent findings. As such, it offers a roadmap to one of the most exciting developments in the field of U.S. slavery studies and to ways of thinking about racial diversity in the history and current practices of higher education.

Today I spoke with Leslie Harris about the book. Dr. Harris is a professor of history at Northwestern University. She is the coeditor, with Ira Berlin, of Slavery in New York and the coeditor, with Daina Ramey Berry, of Slavery and Freedom in Savannah (Georgia).

Adam McNeil is a History PhD student at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

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Lisa Baraitser, "Enduring Time" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) Apr 09, 2020

In Enduring Time (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), practicing psychoanalyst and Professor of Psychosocial Theory Lisa Baraitser (Birkbeck, University of London) explores what it means to ‘take care’ of time in our current temporal predicament, where time appears radically suspended -- without the hope of a progressive future -- yet intensely felt. Drawing on a wide range of artistic, political, cultural, and psychoanalytic objects, she addresses how we might meaningfully engage with ‘the time of our times’ through a series of chapters whose titles also capture our everyday temporal experience: staying, maintaining, repeating, delaying, enduring, recalling, remaining, and ending. In our wide-ranging interview, we discuss the concerns that brought Baraitser to write this book, explore some of her case studies, and ask how her thinking might be brought to bear on clinical practice today.

This interview is the second in my series on Psychoanalysis and Time, produced in collaboration with Waiting Times, a multi-stranded research project on the temporalities of healthcare. Waiting Times is supported by The Wellcome Trust [205400/A/16/Z], and takes places across Birkbeck (University of London) and the University of Exeter. Learn more about the project by visiting whatareyouwaitingfor.org.uk, or follow us on twitter @WhatisWaiting. The interview was recorded in person, prior to the COVID-19 lockdown.

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Bruce E. Reis, "Creative Repetition and Intersubjectivity" (Routledge, 2019) Apr 06, 2020

In his new book Creative Repetition and Intersubjectivity: Contemporary Freudian Explorations of Trauma, Memory, and Clinical Process (Routledge, 2019), Bruce E. Reis writes intimacy is “transformative prior to the delivery of observation or interpretation” and while this book explores “the monsters, dreams and madness which emerge in the consulting room” it is primarily interested the “micro-rather than macro-level at which change occurs.” Honoring his “intellectual commitments” Reis enlists theorists including Winnicott, de M’Uzan, Bollas, and Ogden, to help him render elegant clinical moments as opposed to grand narrative case studies. Through these personal encounters, the reader is invited to consider ways of “sitting with” an unconscious experience that “disrupts rather than brings closure, knowledge or continuity.” While each chapter addresses a specific dialectic, they are all deeply interrelated. Observations made in one reflect and echo in the others; the result, according to Christopher Bollas, is a work of “quiet genius.”

Dr. Reis is a Fellow and Faculty Member at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, New York, an Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor in the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and a member of the Boston Change Process Study Group. He is North American book review editor for the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and serves on the editorial boards of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly and Psychoanalytic Dialogues. He is the co-editor (with Robert Grossmark) of Heterosexual Masculinities featured on this program in 2013.

Christopher Russell is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Chelsea, Manhattan. He can be reached at (212) 260-8115

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Owen Whooley, "On the Heels of Ignorance: Psychiatry and the Politics of Not Knowing" (U Chicago Press, 2019) Apr 03, 2020

Psychiatry has always aimed to peer deep into the human mind, daring to cast light on its darkest corners and untangle its thorniest knots, often invoking the latest medical science in doing so. But, as Owen Whooley’s sweeping new book tells us, peering deep into the human mind is, well, really hard.

On the Heels of Ignorance: Psychiatry and the Politics of Not Knowing (University Chicago Press, 2019) begins with psychiatry’s formal inception in the United States in the 1840s and moves through two centuries of constant struggle simply to define and redefine mental illness, to say nothing of the best way to treat it. Whooley’s book is no anti-psychiatric screed, however; instead, he reveals a field that has muddled through periodic reinventions and conflicting agendas of curiosity, compassion, and professional striving. On the Heels of Ignorance draws from intellectual history and the sociology of professions to portray an ongoing human effort to make sense of complex mental phenomena using an imperfect set of tools, with sometimes tragic results.

In this interview, Dr. Whooley and I discuss the sociology of knowledge and ignorance that guide this book. We then discuss the changing identity of the field of psychiatry, how the DSM affected the legitimacy and perception of the discipline, and ways of managing ignorance. I highly recommend this book for students, professors, and anyone else interested in sociology of knowledge, health and illness and medical sociology, historical sociology, and mental health.

Dr. Owen Whooley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of New Mexico and Senior Fellow, UNM Center for Health Policy.

Krystina Millar is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University. Her research interests include gender, sociology of the body, and sexuality. You can find her on Twitter at @KrystinaMillar.

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Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) Mar 30, 2020

Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like rabbits or hats. Paradox works in the abstract, with words and concepts and symbols, to create the illusion of contradiction. There are no contradictions in reality, but there can appear to be. In Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy (MIT Press, 2020), Matt Cook and a few collaborators dive deeply into more than 75 paradoxes in mathematics, physics, philosophy, and the social sciences. As each paradox is discussed and resolved, Cook helps readers discover the meaning of knowledge and the proper formation of concepts―and how reason can dispel the illusion of contradiction.

The journey begins with “a most ingenious paradox” from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. Readers will then travel from Ancient Greece to cutting-edge laboratories, encounter infinity and its different sizes, and discover mathematical impossibilities inherent in elections. They will tackle conundrums in probability, induction, geometry, and game theory; perform “supertasks”; build apparent perpetual motion machines; meet twins living in different millennia; explore the strange quantum world―and much more.

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Zahi Zalloua, "Žižek on Race: Towards an Anti-Racist Future" (Bloomsbury, 2020) Mar 23, 2020

The Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek’s prolific quips on various cultural and political issues around race and related issues, found either in short YouTube clips or lengthy books have gained a lot of attention, much of it admittedly confused and occasionally offended and frustrated. Part of this is likely due to Žižek’s style, which tends to jump around in a blur of philosophical and cultural references, sometimes obscuring what his actual point is. However, his eclectic style shouldn’t deter us from trying to use Žižek’s theories of fantasy and ideology to understand the racial dimensions of our current political situation. This is the project set out by Zahi Zalloua, with his new book Žižek on Race: Towards an Anti-Racist Future (Bloomsbury, 2020), which seeks to use Žižekian philosophy to arrive at more complicated, but also more productive and emancipatory visions of racial oppression and emancipation might look like.

Zahi Zalloua is the Cushing Eells professor of Philosophy and Literature, and Professor of French and Interdisciplinary Studies at Whitman College. He is also the author of Continental Philosophy and the Palestinian Question: Beyond the Jew and the Greek, as well as Theory’s Autoimmunity: Skepticism, Literature and Philosophy.

Stephen Dozeman is a freelance writer.Stephen Dozeman is a freelance writer.

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Todd McGowan, "Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution" (Columbia UP, 2019) Mar 23, 2020

An Interview with Todd McGowan about his recent Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution (Columbia University Press, 2019). The book advocates for the relevance of Hegel’s dialectical method to questions of contemporary theory and politics. It seeks to disabuse readers of common misapprehensions concerning Hegel’s philosophy, such as the familiar thesis-antithesis-synthesis schema to which the dialectic has so often been reduced, and to show that the concept of contradiction understood in Hegelian fashion is intrinsically subversive of authority. By championing contradiction over ‘difference’ it defies the rhetoric of much leftist theory as it has been formulated in the wake of so-called ‘post-structuralism’. Emancipation After Hegel also combines sophisticated discussion of matters like the limits of formal logic and the history of German Idealism with playful allusions to Star Trek characters and classic films like Casablanca and Bridge on the River Kwai.

Bill Schaffer is a semi-retired academic and writer. He received his PhD from the University of Sydney and held positions teaching Film Studies, Philosophy, and Literature at campuses in Australia and the UK. He has published widely in Film and Animation Studies. He is currently a scholar of No Fixed Institution.

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Sukey Fontelieu, "The Archetypal Pan in America: Hypermasculinity and Terror" (Routledge, 2018) Mar 18, 2020

Relying on Carl Jung’s theory of the complex, as well as the archetypal narratives of the Greek character Pan, Sukey Fontelieu’s The Archetypal Pan in America: Hypermasculinity and Terror (Routledge, 2018) seeks to examine a collection of social and political traumas, both personal and collective. The book examines the development of our personal and social identities in psychoanalytic terms, as well as their historical development through large and defining political events, such as the treatment of indigenous populations, foreign military interventions, and the increasing levels of violence at home. The result is a book that sees our current situation as having been in development for quite some time, and that will require deep personal reflection if we are to move forward.

Sukey Fontelieu, PhD attended the University of Essex and Pacifica Graduate Institute and is currently a professor in the Jungian and Archetypal Studies Program at Pacifica.

Stephen Dozeman is a freelance writer.

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Great Books: Peter Brooks on Freud's "Civilization and its Discontents" Mar 03, 2020

We want to be happy, we want to get what we want, we want to love and be loved. But life, even when our basic needs are met, often makes us unhappy. You can't always get what you want, Freud noted in his 1930 short book, Civilization and its Discontents. Our desires are foiled not by bad luck, our failures, or the environment -- but by the civilization meant to make life better. So why isn't civilization set up to maximize our happiness and pleasure? Why does more civilization also mean more psychological suffering?

In his trenchant short book, Freud shows how culture is not the refinement of humanity but an effort to socialize everyone into a system that produces the types of "discontents" and "unease" which characterize modern existence.

I spoke with Peter Brooks, an expert on Freud who has taught at Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, the University of Virginia and other universities. He's authored many books, including: Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature (2000), Psychoanalysis and Storytelling (1994), Reading for the Plot (1984), and, with Alex Woloch, Whose Freud? (2000). Professor Brooks linked Freud's Civilization and its Discontents to the earlier Thoughts for the Times on War and Death where Freud noticed that the veneer of civilized behavior was thin indeed, and that within months of the beginning of World War I people who had co-existed peacefully were capable of inflicting the most gruesome violence on their neighbors.

I asked him: if civilization and progress inevitably leads to more psychological suffering, what's our way out?

Uli Baer is a professor at New York University. He is also the host of the excellent podcast "Think About It"

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D. Gilhooley and F. Toich, "Psychoanalysis, Intersubjective Writing, and a Postmaterialist Model of Mind" (Routledge, 2019) Feb 27, 2020

More than anything else, Psychoanalysis, Intersubjective Writing, and a Postmaterialist Model of Mind: I Woke Up Dead (Routledge, 2019) bears witness to what’s possible when the raw pain and heartbreak of life and death are worked with in Psychoanalysis. It tells the moving story of an analyst and his patient’s relationship as they discover the uncanny and often eerie aspects of their connected lives, and their deaths.

And, yet, the book is much more. Since its invention, Psychoanalysis has worked with phenomena such as telepathy, thought transference, shared dream and trance states, mass hallucination, dissociated identities, premonitions from the future, doppelgängers, doubles, parallel lives, somnambulism, visitations from the deceased, and other paranormal phenomena. Dan Gilhooley and Frank Toich’s book is a considerable contribution to this history in Psychoanalysis that is still very much in the making. Rather than approaching these phenomena and Psychoanalysis through a biological model, as Freud did, or through a linguistic model, as Lacan did, Gilhooley and Toich approach these phenomena through quantum theory. In doing so they provide what is certainly one of the more radical revisionings of the Unconscious to date. In their hands, the Unconscious speaks to us from the future and from locations beyond ourselves just as much as it provides access to multiple universes and times. In doing so, Gilhooley and Toich offer an account of the unconscious that radically decenters the self and its identities, desires, and impulses in ways that make it possible to imagine anew what is possible in psychoanalytic treatment.

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Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) Feb 25, 2020

How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McMaster University, provides a unique sociological analysis of how critics confront the different types of uncertainty associated with their practice. The book explores how reviewers get matched to books, the ethics and etiquette of negative reviews and ‘punching up’, along with professional identities and the future of criticism. The book is packed with interview material, coupled with accessible and easy to follow theoretical interventions, creating a text that will be of interest to social sciences, humanities, and general readers alike.

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Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider, "Why Does Patriarchy Persist?" (Polity, 2018) Feb 10, 2020

Activists have been working to dismantle patriarchal structures since the feminist and civil rights movements of the last century, and yet we continue to struggle with patriarchy today. In their new book, Why Does Patriarchy Persist? (Polity, 2018), Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider use psychoanalysis and psychology as frameworks for understanding the vexingly enduring power of this social structure. They offer a cogent and eye-opening theory addressing the fear of loss against which patriarchy aims to protect us, and the consequent impingements on our ability to enter into genuine relationships. In our interview, Carol and Naomi talk about how this book came about and what their ideas offer for our understanding of current political events.

Carol Gilligan is a writer, activist, University Professor at New York University, and the author of In a Different Voice, one of the most influential feminist books of all time.

Naomi Snider is a research fellow at New York University, co-founder of NYU’s Radical Listening Project, and a candidate in psychoanalytic training at the William Alanson White Institute.

Eugenio Duarte is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute in New York City and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group; and faculty at Florida Psychoanalytic Institute in Miami. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (2018, Routledge).

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K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) Jan 30, 2020

If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years working on a PhD, or if you’re a faculty member whose career has basically consisted of higher ed, switching isn’t so easy. PhD holders are mostly trained to work as professors, and making easy connections to other careers is no mean feat. Because the people you know were generally trained to do the same sorts of things, an easy source of advice might not be there for you.

Thankfully, for anybody who wishes there was a guidebook that would just break all of this down, that book has now been written. Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers (Stylus Publishing, 2020) by Kathryn E. Linder, Kevin Kelly, and Thomas J. Tobin offers practical advice and step-by-step instructions on how to decide if you want to leave behind academia and how to start searching for a new career. If a lot of career advice is too vague or too ambiguous, this book corrects that by outlining not just how to figure out what you might want to do, but critically, how you might go about accomplishing that.

Zeb Larson is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a PhD in History. His research deals with the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com.

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Adrian Johnston, "A New German Idealism: Hegel, Žižek and Dialectical Materialism" (Columbia UP, 2018) Jan 29, 2020

In 2012, the world-renowned philosopher, psychoanalyst and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek released his 1000-page tome Less Than Nothing, following it up afterwards with its shorter reformulation Absolute Recoil in 2014. The works contained his usual use of movie-references, historical and political events and jokes to engage in some substantial philosophical formulations, particularly in dialogue with Hegel and Lacan. In these books, Žižek forged a new developed a number of innovative approaches to various philosophical questions, from quantum mechanics to contemporary political movements. Adrian Johnston’s most recent book on Žižek, A New German Idealism: Hegel, Žižek and Dialectical Materialism (Columbia University Press, 2018) traces a number of these various developments in detail, salvaging the key philosophical themes while also offering several criticisms and developments of his own.

Adrian Johnston is Distinguished Professor in and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico and is a faculty member at the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute in Atlanta. His many books include Žižek’s Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity (2008) and Badiou, Žižek and Political Transformations: The Cadence of Change (2009). With Slavoj Žižek and Todd McGowan, he is a co-editor of the book series Diaeresis, all from Northwestern University Press.

Stephen Dozeman is a freelance writer.

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Rosine Jozef Perelberg, "Psychic Bisexuality: A British-French Dialogue" (Routledge, 2018) Jan 27, 2020

Psychic Bisexuality: A British-French Dialogue (Routledge, 2018), edited by Rosine Jozef Perelberg, clarifies and develops the Freudian conception according to which sexual identity is not reduced to the anatomical difference between the sexes, but is constructed as a psychic bisexuality that is inherent to all human beings.

The book takes the Freudian project into new grounds of clinical practice and theoretical formulations and contributes to a profound psychoanalytic understanding of sexuality. The object of pychoanalysis is psychosexuality, which is not, in the final analysis, determined by having a male or a female body, but by the unconscious phantasies that are reached après coup through tracing the nuanced interplay of identifications as they are projected, enacted and experienced in the transference and the countertransference in the analytic encounter.

Drawing on British and French Freudian and post-Freudian traditions, the book explores questions of love, transference and countertransference, sexual identity and gender to set out the latest clinical understanding of bisexuality, and includes chapters from influential French analysts available in English for the first time. Psychic Bisexuality: A British-French Dialogue will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists as well as gender studies scholars.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist with a private practice in Los Angeles. He is candidate at The Psychoanalytic Center of California. He can be reached at philipjlance@gmail.com.

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Jonathan Erickson, "Imagination in the Western Psyche: From Ancient Greece to Modern Neuroscience" (Routledge, 2019) Jan 15, 2020

Imagination is one of the most important elements of being human, but is most often assumed we know what it is, while rarely being analyzed. Here with me today is Jonathan Erickson to discuss his recent book Imagination in the Western Psyche: From Ancient Greece to Modern Neuroscience (Routledge, 2019). The book looks at various theories of imagination through history, and then looks at what neuroscience can tell us about the functioning of imagination, as well as looking at what the functioning of imagination can tell us about neuroscience.

Jonathan Erickson is a writer and educator, and holds a BA in English literature from UC Berkeley and a PhD in depth psychology from the Pacifica Graduate Institute in California.

Stephen Dozeman is a freelance writer.

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Babette Becker, "I Should Have Been Music" (Page Publishing, 2018) Dec 18, 2019

Dr. Babette Becker’s memoir I Should Have Been Music (Page Publishing, 2018) recounts her experience as a patient in four different mental hospitals from 1957 to 1960. It was a time when little was known about mental illness, except the shame and horror of it, and nothing was known about early childhood trauma. Passed from hospital to hospital carrying several severe classic diagnostic labels, she narrowly missed being sent to a State hospital where, if not for luck, she might have been incarcerated for the rest her life. The memoir follows her progress through these hospitals as well as the progress from psychosis to functioning adult. Along with her memories and journal entries from her time in the hospitals the book includes doctors' reports from each of the hospitals. These primary source materials reveal the stark contrast between the doctors' portrayal and the reality of Dr. Becker’s experience.

Christopher Russell is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Chelsea, Manhattan.

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Vanessa Sinclair and Manya Steinkoler, "On Psychoanalysis and Violence" (Routledge, 2018) Dec 16, 2019

Gun violence must be what drive defusion looks like; with every shot fired, with every life stilled by rounds of ammo, we are summoned to address the acute darkness of psychic collapse and radical decompensation. We witness the unthreading of a once more sturdily interwoven seam. We live on the edge. Don’t sit with your back to the door. By the time you get that gun out of your purse, you know it’s already too late. How did we get to this point? How did you and I become captive to a violence that holds us all captive?

Ours is a culture that depends on spikes in fear followed by states of frenzy followed by mind-blowing numbness. Given the overstimulation that drives us to seek quiescence—how we live now—I chose the death drive as the autumnal theme for my work at NBiP. Vanessa Sinclair and Manya Steinkoler’s book Psychoanalysis and Violence: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspectives (Routledge 2018) provided me with an antidote to the temptation to defensively play dead.

It is perhaps an understatement to say that our capacity to withstand otherness needs some bolstering. We are in luck with this interview for no one works with otherness in quite the way Lacanian-inflected analysts do.

Sinclair and Steinkoler argue that we have gone beyond being unbehagen—the malaise one feels in everyday life (which would now feel like a luxury)—and detail a different kind of anxious, imperiled experience—they call it to be “angwashed”: in short, we are soaking in it.

This book is about the consequences of a new experience of aloneness, about the inculcation and proliferation of narcissism, and its dire consequences. I think of guns and I think of trigger warnings. The one who pulls the trigger is radically alone. The one who needs the safe space ends up being set apart. No one belongs. Belonging demands we be with others. Yet when you kill someone they are with you forever. When you kill someone you have also at long last really made contact with a being outside yourself. As Modern analysts say: “follow the contact.”

Lacan reminds us that the human subject is catapulted into being by an encounter with language, the other, and the social link. Each of these entities threatens human narcissism. As such, every encounter with difference (represented by language, the other, the world) can arouse the specter of violence.

Please feel free to address all comments regarding the interview to me at tracedoris@gmail.com

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Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019) Dec 03, 2019

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous―and easier to share than ever. We associate charts with science and reason; the flashy visuals are both appealing and persuasive. Pie charts, maps, bar and line graphs, and scatter plots (to name a few) can better inform us, revealing patterns and trends hidden behind the numbers we encounter in our lives. In short, good charts make us smarter―if we know how to read them.

However, they can also lead us astray. Charts lie in a variety of ways―displaying incomplete or inaccurate data, suggesting misleading patterns, and concealing uncertainty―or are frequently misunderstood, such as the confusing cone of uncertainty maps shown on TV every hurricane season. To make matters worse, many of us are ill-equipped to interpret the visuals that politicians, journalists, advertisers, and even our employers present each day, enabling bad actors to easily manipulate them to promote their own agendas.

In How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information (W. W. Norton, 2019), data visualization expert Alberto Cairo teaches us to not only spot the lies in deceptive visuals, but also to take advantage of good ones to understand complex stories. Public conversations are increasingly propelled by numbers, and to make sense of them we must be able to decode and use visual information. By examining contemporary examples ranging from election-result infographics to global GDP maps and box-office record charts, How Charts Lie demystifies an essential new literacy, one that will make us better equipped to navigate our data-driven world.

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Brett Kahr, "Bombs in the Consulting Room: Surviving Psychological Shrapnel" (Routledge, 2019 Nov 15, 2019

"I’m very happy to say I really really do love psychoanalysis. I think the insights are absolutely genius and I don’t think that I would be able to do any of my work if I didn’t have those ideas readily available to me."

In Bombs in the Consulting Room: Surviving Psychological Shrapnel(Routledge 2019), Professor Brett Kahr takes us on a tour de force through the rough fringes of clinical practice. He portrays his work with forensic and non-verbal patients, with sado-masochistic couples and deeply disturbed individuals. He is a true champion of the lost art of interpretation in the face of extremely challenging behaviour in the consulting room and treats us to gems of insight gathered from decades of clinical experience and in-depth study of the history of the field.

The book and the interview will be of great interest to clinicians working in independent or institutional settings with the most threatening and vulnerable patients.

Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de.

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Ian Parker, "Psychoanalysis, Clinic, and Context: Subjectivity, History, and Autobiography" (Routledge, 2019) Nov 13, 2019

There are many pathways into the world of psychoanalysis. Some arrive from fields like psychiatry and psychology; some from literature, philosophy, and the humanities; and others from political organising. Our guest Ian Parker found his way into Lacanian psychoanalysis via dissatisfaction with his training in psychology, alongside strongly-held Marxist and feminist political commitments. In his autobiographical work, Psychoanalysis, Clinic, and Context: Subjectivity, History, and Autobiography (Routledge, 2019), Ian shares with us his encounter with British psychoanalysis’s “entangled world of personal-political relationships and rivalries,” including his exploration of Kleinian leftists, group analysts, and Lacanian institutes, while making the case for the emancipatory potential of psychoanalytic thinking and practice, as summarized in his provocative statement: “Psychoanalysis is not what you think.” Tune to hear Ian’s story and his views on the political, theoretical, and clinical potentials and pitfalls of psychoanalysis today.

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John Launer, "Sex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein" (Henry N. Abrams, 2017) Nov 11, 2019

John Launer's Sex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein (Henry N. Abrams, 2017) manages to supplant (and given the power of the visual image, this is no mean feat) the picture you may have in your mind of Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender in flagrante delicto. If this reference does not ring a bell, perhaps you can just consider yourself lucky. What follows are some head spinning facts: Sabina Spielrein was the first female member of Freudʼs inner circle. As a young Russian woman from a prominent, educated and chaotic Jewish family, she fell ill and was treated at the Burghozli Hospital for psychiatric illnesses in Zurich. There she began to recover and to do research into the psyche. On regaining her emotional balance, she attended medical school. She wrote a paper that argued for the existence of a death instinct in 1912, pre-empting Freudʼs work in that area by 8 years. She developed ways of working with children that also preceded the thinking of Anna Freud or Melanie Klein. Her dissertation was on the language of schizophrenia. She comingled evolutionary ideas with psychoanalytic ideas. She was interested in sex and sexuality. She treated Jean Piaget. She worked with Vygotsky. She was involved with the project under Trotsky to link communism with psychoanalysis. She endeavored to mend the rift between Freud and Jung. She was killed by the Nazi regime.

Her life resembles a nodal point; she stood at the crossroads of extraordinary changes in world politics and psychoanalysis. She was not necessarily happy. She wrote in ways that could hide her strong points of view. She was on the scene yet left almost no footprint. She was a person with breakdown knowledge who became an analyst. She was with people, working, and yet she comes off as solitary. I have written all of this and not mentioned she had a youthful affair and fascination with Carl Jung. Why do I not lead with this story you may ask? After all that is the story we all know if we know anything about her. But given what has been detailed above, a life with many contours, doesnʼt the young adult dalliance with Jung seem more or less a footnote?

Tracy D. Morgan is the founding editor and first host of NBIP. A psychoanalyst, practicing in NYC and Rome, she serves on the faculty at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies. Trained also as a historian, she writes about many things. Write to her at tracedoris@gmail.com.

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Carlo Bonomi, "The Cut and the Building of Psychoanalysis, Vol. I," (Routledge, 2015) Nov 07, 2019

Carlo Bonomi's two-volume set dreams the foundation of psychoanalysis as it writes its history. The work animates the reader's imagination, inviting them to journey the interwoven paths of Sigmund Freud's associations, anxieties and conflicts. These books tackle what has often remained hidden both in the historical writing about psychoanalysis and in Freud's explicit account of castration: the practice of female genital mutilation, pervasive in major European cities as treatment for hysteria in the end of 19th century.

In this interview we discussed the first volume of work, The Cut and the Building of Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud and Emma Eckstein (Routledge, 2015). We talked about Freud's reaction to the practices of medical castration of women and children, as well as his attempts to cope with the demands of his father that Sigmund, following the orthodox Jewish custom, circumcise his own sons. We begin to introduce the complex imagistic structure of Bonomi's analysis: the dreams that form the backbone of this study, particularly the dream of Irma's Injection. In the next part, we will speak about the relationship between Freud, his trauma, and Sándor Ferenczi, and discuss Ferenczi's legacy in the history of psychoanalysis.

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Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing Nov 03, 2019

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might called "fundamental research." Their authors--dedicated researchers one and all--provide the scholarly stuff upon which many non-fiction trade books are based. So when you are reading, say, a popular history, you are often reading UP books at one remove. Of course, some UP books are also bestsellers, and they are all well written (and, I should say, thoroughly vetted thanks to the peer review system), but the greatest contribution of UPs is to provide a base of fundamental research to the public. And they do a great job of it.

How do they do it? Today I talked to Kathryn Conrad, the president of the Association of University Presses, about the work of UPs, the challenges they face, and some terrific new directions they are going. We also talked about why, if you have a scholarly book in progress, you should talk to UP editors early and often. And she explains how! Listen in.

Marshall Poe is the editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@gmail.com.

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Benjamin Fong, "Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism" (Columbia UP, 2016) Oct 31, 2019

Benjamin Fong’s Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism (Columbia UP, 2016) revitalizes two oft’ maligned psychoanalytic concepts, the death drive and the drive to mastery, and makes lively and thoroughgoing use of both to revisit arguments about the power of the culture industry and how we might resist its narcotizing allure. For instance, we know Facebook is the devil, offering us relief from real strife via impotent political engagement; like prisoners in solitary we write on its wall. We know Netflix is a platform for product placement that we pay for, meanwhile losing track of our myriad subscriptions. We know we ought to think twice before inhaling the contents of either yet we simply cannot seem to stop ourselves. What gives?

This--our compliant involvement with what promises to decrease our power and increase our alienation—is an old Frankfurt School obsession and query. Fong attempts to explain our complicity by using Freud altogether differently than his forebears. (Fong has been a member of the Society for Psychoanalytic Inquiry which, having turned ghosts into ancestors, strikes me as the closest thing we have to a contemporary version of the Institut fur Sozialforschung going today, although I believe most of its members are American born.) He reminds us that the Frankfurt School ignored the death drive. In fact, the Freud engaged by the Frankfurt School appears to have stopped writing around 1919. (It is very odd to think that they did not absorb and make use of Beyond The Pleasure Principle, forget Civilization and Its Discontents.) I admit I found myself wondering if Freud’s conclusions about man as wolf to man, the impossibility of loving our neighbor as ourselves, and our desire to go out as we came in, were simply too bleak even for Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse?

Of course, the death drive is tough for politics: how to organize people to fight for what is just if, at the end of the day, they simply seek the cessation of tension, and furthermore, are compulsively drawn to repeat their worst experiences? Freud’s thinking after 1920 can be read as offering a devastating critique of neoliberal “just do it” life with its appeals to progress and perfectibility. And Fong puts this Freud to great use. Attempting to construct a way out of being subsumed by the culture industry, with its promise of ruin, Fong champions a reappraisal of the super-ego as a friendly presence. He borrows from Hans Loewald, who argued for the super-ego as being future oriented, and harboring a hopeful fantasy, like a kind parent, about the fate of the ego over time.

Fong also engages the thinking of Jacques Lacan, and with his help, tries to answer a question derived from a debate between Freud and Wilhelm Reich, about “where does the misery come from?” (Thanks to Jacqueline Rose for bringing this question to all of our attention). He develops a new theory (!) about aggressivity that locates it as arising neither solely from within nor from without. Interestingly, he does not rely on Laplanche to make his argument.

That said, mastery as a concept scares me. Can “the master’s tools,” to paraphrase Audre Lorde, “dismantle the master’s house?” Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development did come to mind as I read, and I was left at times feeling a bit like one of Carol Gilligan’s adolescent girls, putting my feet, talk about returning to the primordial ooze, into the shoes of another. Then there is Freud’s idea that women lack sufficient super-egos. Following this logic, it is not too strange to ask if women can exercise mastery? And finally, what about Kerry James Marshall’s evocative and resonant use of the word, albeit spelled differently (Mastry), to refer to both slavery, the slave master, and the lives of those who survived it and his aftermath? Mastery is not a neutral word.

Tracy D. Morgan is a psychoanalyst and the founding editor of NBiP. Write to her at tracedoris@gmail.com

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Robert P. Drozek, "Psychoanalysis as an Ethical Process" (Routledge, 2019) Oct 28, 2019

The subject of ethics in psychoanalysis has long been relegated to the sidelines of clinical theory. In his new book Psychoanalysis as an Ethical Process with a forward by Peter Fonagy (Routledge, 2019), Robert P. Drozek utilizes both philosophical and analytic concepts to arrive at a new theory of an ethical relational psychoanalysis, one that emphasizes the dignity and the values of both patient and analyst. Although the discussion of ethics is often seen as dry, Psychoanalysis as an Ethical Process disproves that notion with compelling clinical examples and lively discussion of theoretical ideas. In this interview we focus on the areas of therapeutic action and technique and how Drozek’s incorporation of ethics can enhance our understanding of our work.

This book is will be of interest to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts as well as those with as students of philosophy.

You can reach Christopher Bandini at @cebandini.

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J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019) Oct 24, 2019

The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not necessarily make us good teachers. Jessamyn Neuhaus’s Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers(West Virginia University Press, 2019) helps us to identify and embrace that geekiness in us and then offers practical, step-by-step guidelines for how to turn it to effective pedagogy. It’s a sharp, slim, and entertaining volume that can make better teachers of us all.

Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A Peoples History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017).

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Ira Helderman, "Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion" (UNC Press, 2019) Oct 24, 2019

Buddhism and psychotherapy have been in conversation since the days of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Erich Fromm. Today, when practices drawn from Buddhism have entered the mainstream, that conversation continues in multiple dimensions. In Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Ira Helderman looks at the ways psychotherapists, some of them also active as leaders of Dharma communities, have engaged Buddhism, both as individuals and in their approach to their psychotherapeutic practice. He relies on his own research, interviews with therapists, and fieldwork in a field that continues to take new forms.

Jack Petranker is the founder of Founder, Center for Creative Inquiry and Full Presence Mindfulness.

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Amy Allen and Mari Ruti, "Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan: A Dialogue," Part 2 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) Oct 11, 2019

What happens when a Kleinian and Lacanian have a committed, generous, and accessible conversation about the commonalities and differences between their psychoanalytic perspectives? In this special, two-part interview, host Jordan Osserman joins authors Amy Allen, a prominent representative of Frankfurt School critical theory with expertise on Klein, and Mari Ruti, a leading Lacanian critical theorist, to discuss their new book, Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan: A Dialogue (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). In part one, posted on 16th September, we explored the overall structure of the book and the process of writing it, then entered into a conversation on the topic of the ego in Klein and Lacan. In this part, we delve deeper into the knotty areas of the book, including Allen’s understanding of intrapsychic versus intersubjective phenomena in Klein, Ruti’s distinction between circumstantial and constitutive trauma in Lacan, and the challenges involved in balancing psychoanalytic universalism with a Foucauldian commitment to context and contingency.

Jordan Osserman grew up in South Florida and currently calls London home. He received his PhD in gender studies and psychoanalysis from University College London, his MA in psychosocial studies from Birkbeck College, and his BA in women's and gender studies from Dartmouth College. His published work can be found here.

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Valery Hazanov, "The Fear of Doing Nothing: Notes of a Young Therapist" (Sphinx, 2019) Sep 23, 2019

"Psychotherapy, in my experience, feels nothing like a paper about psychotherapy."

In his honest, witty and at times deeply moving account of his graduate training in New York City, Valery Hazanov gives us the unique opportunity of joining a therapist at the beginning of his career. The Fear of Doing Nothing: Notes of a Young Therapist (Sphinx, 2019) raises a number of provocative questions about the efficacy of psychotherapy, the essence of the process and the experience of being in a therapeutic relationship. Through ten chapters we are confronted with the confusion and dissonance between theory and practice that every clinician has to face in his work with patients. We get to share in Valery’s work with patients in a variety of setting. There is individual therapy, as well as couples therapy, group therapy and an intense tour de force through a day in the community clinic. The text is remarkable in its intimacy with the subject, the therapeutic dyad. We follow closely not only the development of the patients, but also Valery’s professional and personal development, which in our field are too closely connected to be seen as seperate entities anyway. Without touching on the subject explicitly, the book asks even deeper questions through its form. What are we doing as a discipline that is supposedly concerned with human subjectivity when we write about clinical encounters in a seemingly objective fashion? And what is psychoanalytic writing anyway?

In the interview we touch on these topics as well as the connection of psychotherapy and politics, the literary quality of the book and question of eclecticism, among many others.

Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de.

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Amy Allen and Mari Ruti, "Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan: A Dialogue" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) Sep 16, 2019

What happens when a Kleinian and Lacanian have a committed, generous, and accessible conversation about the commonalities and differences between their psychoanalytic perspectives? In this special, two-part interview, host Jordan Osserman joins authors Amy Allen, a prominent representative of Frankfurt School critical theory with expertise on Klein, and Mari Ruti, a leading Lacanian critical theorist, to discuss their new book, Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan: A Dialogue (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). The format of the book is innovative in its own right: the two thinkers set aside a week to meet in person everyday and record themselves discussing, free-form, a variety of themes pertaining to their research interests, including subjectivity, affect, love, creativity, and politics. They then edited the content of these conversations into this fascinating work, which maintains the format of a dialogue. In this podcast, we try to recapture something of the spirit of the book, allowing Ruti and Allen to explore the ways they see the work of Klein and Lacan intersect and diverge, and how they put these theorists to work in their own fields.

After the first episode, we felt that the conversation was so rich — and there was so much more left to say — that we decided to record another one. Among other topics, this first part explores the process of writing this unique book, how Ruti and Allen came to realise that Lacan’s critique of ego psychology need not be opposed to Klein’s understanding of ego integration, and how both authors’ focus on critical theory relates to the clinic. In part two, we will delve deeper into the knotty areas of the book, including Allen’s understanding of intrapsychic versus intersubjective phenomena in Klein, Ruti’s distinction between circumstantial and constitutive trauma in Lacan, and the challenges involved in balancing psychoanalytic universalism with a Foucauldian commitment to context and contingency.

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E. Danto and A. Steiner-Strauss, "Freud/Tiffany: Anna Freud, Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham and the Best Possible School" (Routledge, 2018) Jul 19, 2019

Elizabeth Danto and Alexandra Steiner-Strauss’ edited book, Freud/Tiffany: Anna Freud, Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham and The Best Possible School (Routledge, 2018), stands to alter what has become practically an idee fixe about Anna Freud. Whereas she can seem to exist only in a dyad with her father, she comes to life in this collection, outside of his purview. We meet the wealthy Dorothy Tiffany (as in stained glass) Burlingham from NYC who settles in Vienna with her children, fleeing a hard marriage, seeking analytic treatment for herself and her family. In short order, Anna Freud becomes the most important person in her life. Anna returns Dorothy’s affections and together they embark on many marvelous and groundbreaking psychoanalytic projects.

They create the Hietzing School in Red Vienna wherein the seeds for some of the most important psychoanalytic theorizing about children and adolescents are planted. Anna analyzes Dorothy’s son. Sigmund Freud analyzes Dorothy who he accepts as a daughter-in-law. Together these two women form an over 40 year love and professional relationship that included buying a country cottage for weekend sojourns away from it all to creating the Hampstead war nurseries. Anna helped raise Dorothy’s three kids and Dorothy trained to become an analyst. Thanks to the wonderful essays in this book, Anna Freud begins to take a new and exciting shape.

The book reads like a psychoanalytic who’s who: Erik Erikson, Peter Blos, August Aichorn are all on the scene teaching and advising at Heitzing. Almost all the students have analytic sessions. The Dewey method is applied. We meet Blos before he decides to enter analysis, having fallen into this position. We meet Erikson before he left his career as an artist to pursue analysis as well.

This collection tells the story of a school, the lives it impacted, the intellectual and clinical legacy it generated, but most especially it highlights the libidinous legacy of Freud and Burlingham, who, in finding and loving each other, created new modes of research, innovative forms of clinical education and a variety of radical institutions that have forever changed the way we understand the lives of children. And I have not even mentioned all the gorgeous photographs sprinkled throughout the text.

Tracy D. Morgan is the founding editor and host of NBIP, a psychoanalyst in practice in NYC trained also as a historian, she writes about many things.

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Stijn Vanheule, Derek Hook and Calum Neill, "Reading Lacan’s Écrits" (Routledge, 2018) Jul 15, 2019

Lacan published his Écrits in 1966, a compilation of his written work up to that middle period in his teaching. Notoriously difficult to read, the editors of the book we’re discussing today describe the Écrits as “an unwieldy, conglomerate ‘urtext’ … not a book at all … but ‘the waste’ of his teaching: elements he didn’t discuss in public … and sensitive points to which his audience would have reacted with reluctance.” It wasn’t until 2007 that, thanks to work of translator Bruce Fink, the complete edition of the Écrits were finally published in English. Now, Stijn Vanheule, Derek Hook and Calum Neill have brought us the three volume work, Reading Lacan’s Écrits (Routledge, 2018), which features world renowned Lacanian scholars and clinicians explicating in detailed paragraph-by-paragraph commentary each of the essays in the Écrits. Thanks to this publication, coming to grips with the Écrits in all its complexity has suddenly become possible. Lacan’s cryptic pronouncements are miraculously, lucidly reformulated, revealing them in their original and enlightening contributions to the practice and theory of psychoanalysis. What was involved in putting together this monumental and challenging work of exegesis? What does it say about the Lacanian tradition today — in all its differing styles, emphases and factions? Join us in conversation with Derek, Calum and Stijn as we explore this and more.

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Adrienne Harris and Victoria Demos, "Heart Melts Forward: The Collected Writings of Emmanuel Ghent" (Routledge, 2018) Jun 07, 2019

Composer, philosopher, scientist, psychoanalyst-Emmanuel ("Manny") Ghent was all of these and more. In this comprehensive interview with the editors, Adrienne Harris and Victoria Demos of the new book Heart Melts Forward: The Collected Writings of Emmanuel Ghent (Routledge, 2018) we discuss the seminal theoretical ideas Manny was passionate about and their impact on relational thinking.

Manny Ghent has a firm place in the relational/psychoanalytic lineage. He was an analysand of Clara Thompson, who one of the founding members of the interpersonal school, and herself an analysand of Sandor Ferenczi. Manny Ghent had a profound effect on the first generation of interpersonal relational writers including Stephen Mitchell, Muriel Dimen, and Jessica Benjamin. Heart Melts Forward is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the relational school of thought. In addition to being a psychoanalyst, Manny Ghent was a well-regarded composer and pioneer in electronic music. Here is a link to one of his better known works, Phosphones: https://vimeo.com/113807053

You can reach Christopher Bandini at @cebandini.

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Giuseppe Civitarese, "An Apocryphal Dictionary of Psychoanalysis" (Routledge, 2019) Jun 04, 2019

Giuseppe Civitarese's An Apocryphal Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2019) is a book of transpositions, collecting together the author’s clinical vignettes, enigmatic objects, stray thoughts, projects, images, notes from readings, and musings; but also remarks on films and exhibitions, memories, episodes from daily life, summaries of papers to write, questions, doubts and obsessions—all of which have shaped the author’s understanding of psychoanalysis.

Born from moments in which the author has sensed a solution for problems encountered in daily practice or for obscure but exciting points of theory, the entries are ordered in an apocryphal manner, offering a personal and challenging view of psychoanalysis. Like small epiphanies in which there is always an emotion—be it that of amusement, astonishment, gratitude, sadness, joy—they express the style of the analyst and of the person in treating mental suffering and give a glimpse into the imaginary which nurtures it. Ideas for psychoanalysis are outlined where at center stage is the ability to wait, to be surprised; to operate from the place of the unconscious, which by definition is a place of negativity, and to exercise a form of soft skepticism—ultimately, a mode of hospitality.

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Lawrence J. Brown, "Transformational Processes in Clinical Psychoanalysis: Dreaming, Emotions and the Present Moment" (Routledge, 2019) May 14, 2019

In Transformational Processes in Clinical Psychoanalysis: Dreaming, Emotions and the Present Moment (Routledge, 2019), Lawrence J. Brown offers a contemporary perspective on how the mind transforms, and gives meaning to, emotional experience that arises unconsciously in the here-and-now of the clinical hour. Brown surveys the developments in theory and practice that follow from Freud’s original observations and traces this evolution from its conception to contemporary analytic field theory.

Brown cast a wide theoretical net in his exploration of these transformational processes and builds on the contributions of Freud, Theodor Reik, Bion, Ogden, the Barangers, Cassorla, Civitarese and Ferro. Bion’s theories of alpha function, transformations, dreaming and his clinical emphasis on the present moment are foundation to this book. Brown’s writing is clear and aims to describe the various theoretical ideas as plainly as possible. Detailed clinical material is given in most chapters to illustrate the theoretical perspectives. Brown applies this theory to transformational processes to a variety of topics, including the analyst’s receptivity, countertransference as transformation, the analytic setting, the paintings of J.M.W. Turn, “autistic transformation” and other clinical situations in the analysis of children and adults.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist with a private practice in Los Angeles. He is candidate at The Psychoanalytic Center of California. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com

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Ellen Pinsky, "Death and Fallibility in the Psychoanalytic Encounter: Mortal Gifts" (Routledge, 2017) Apr 19, 2019

If I could vote for my favorite new psychoanalytic book of the 21st century, Ellen Pinsky's Death and Fallibility in the Psychoanalytic Encounter: Mortal Gifts (Routledge, 2017) would be it.

But to be clear, this is actually a set of essays and definitely not a collection of articles: it is full of style. The author marries two blind spots in the field and creates a conversation between them. The result of this union yields a reflective rejoinder to popular psychoanalytic preoccupations old and new, chief among them, enactments, neutrality, analytic subjectivity, and abstinence.

These essays also return sex and death to the heart of the psychoanalytic endeavor while reminding the reader that technique and ethics are one and the same.

Pinsky sets out to explore the field’s overall silence regarding the mortality of the analyst and his sexual transgressions in the consulting room. She asks, what happens to the patient when the analysis is brought to a sudden end, by death or violation of the frame?

She argues that the turning of a blind eye to these two conceptually interrelated “events” is rooted in a deeper refusal to wrestle with the demands of analytic work and the analyst's fallibility. (I could make an argument that this is also largely a book about men in the field but that would be a separate essay.)

Our consulting rooms are, ideally, transference hothouses. How can the analyst survive the rigors of a setting that demands he listen, feel and absorb multiple transferences, and perhaps most especially the demand for love and gratification, without acting? What, if any, possible preparation can safeguard analysts and analytic treatments from demise? How does the analyst endure not mattering day in and day out, because if we are honest, we know the transference is not about who we actually are? Have we fallen prey to a narrative that sees the analyst as being like a God, beyond death, asks Pinsky, so as to protect the analyst from the truth of his human imperfectability, and to compensate for his deprivations?

If we are abstinent, she argues, desire grows, and if we are neutral, the patient wants to say more. Desire and freedom flourish in this fertile surround. Should the transference flower, and wildly so, on the uptick, ghosts become ancestors. However, should the analyst feel indomitable, beyond supervision, (an American conceit for sure) he can lose the proverbial thread, thinking of himself as an exception, beyond death or analytic responsibility. He may believe the love emanating from the patient to be about his person and feel compelled to act or, he is driven to retaliate because he knows he is irrelevant yet must suffer verbal slings and arrows. Either which, the patient, giving the analyst her all, may concomitantly find her wishes for love gratified, yet her analysis annihilated.

Perhaps it would be better if her analyst had died without a warning? And many an analyst dies without giving any warning, leaving patients scattered hither and yon. How, asks Pinsky, do we tell a patient that things must come to an unwelcome end? What does the patient lose when the analyst dies anyway? What is the fate of the transference when the conditions that house it are destroyed, either by death or transgression?

Tracy Morgan is the founding editor of New Books in Psychoanalysis and a psychoanalyst, working in NY, NY and Rome, Italy. She can be reached at tracedoris@gmail.com.

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Donald L. Carveth, "Psychoanalytic Thinking: A Dialectical Critique of Contemporary Theory and Practice" (Routledge, 2018) Apr 09, 2019

Since the classical Freudian and ego psychology paradigms lost their position of dominance in the late 1950’s, psychoanalysis became a multi-paradigm science with those working in the different frameworks increasingly engaging only with those in the same or related intellectual “silos.” Beginning with Freud’s theory of human nature and civilization, Psychoanalytic Thinking: A Dialectical Critique of Contemporary Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2018) proceeds to review and critically evaluate a series of post-Freudian contributions to psychoanalytic thought.

Out of dialogue and mutual critique, psychoanalysis can separate the wheat from the chaff, collect the wheat and approach an ever-evolving synthesis. This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists and, more broadly, to readers in philosophy, social science and critical social theory.

Donald Carveth is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Social and Political Thought and a Senior Scholar at York University, Toronto, Canada and a Training and Supervising Analyst in the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis. He is past Director of the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis and a past Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis/Revue canadienne de psychanalyse.

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Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing Mar 19, 2019

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contribute to this process? This podcast addresses this issue. We interview Professor Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, whose book, The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance (forthcoming with MIT Press) is undergoing a Massive Online Peer-Review (MOPR) process, where everyone can make comments on his manuscript. Additionally, his book will be Open Access (OA) since the date of publication. We discuss with him how do MOPR and OA work, how he managed to combine both of them and how these initiatives can contribute to the democratization of knowledge.

You can participate in the MOPR process of The Good Drone through this link: https://thegooddrone.pubpub.org/

Felipe G. Santos is a PhD candidate at the Central European University. His research is focused on how activists care for each other and how care practices within social movements mobilize and radicalize heavily aggrieved collectives.

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Jacob Johanssen, "Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture: Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data" (Routledge, 2018) Feb 28, 2019

How can insights from psychoanalysis help us understand digital culture? in Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture: Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data (Routledge, 2018), Jacob Johanssen, a senior lecturer in the University of Westminster's School of Media and Communication, draws on the work of Freud and Anzieu to explore both traditional and new forms of media. The book uses research projects on the Embarrassing Bodies television show, and on digital labour, to show how psychoanalysis can inform research methods and explain how people engage with TV, use Twitter, and present themselves online. Moreover, the book grapples with the rise of big data, offering new perspectives on content providers such as Netflix. Packed with rich analysis and a wealth of examples, the book will be essential reading across cultural and media studies.

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Benoît Majerus, "From the Middle Ages to Today: Experiences and Representations of Madness in Paris" (Parigramme, 2018) Jan 16, 2019

With Paris as the organizing locus of his new book, Du moyen âge à nos jours, expériences et représentations de la folie à Paris [From the Middle Ages to Today, Experiences and Representations of Madness in Paris], Benoît Majerus uses an impressively wide range of visual sources, from religious images and architectural photographs to neuroleptic advertisements and administrative maps. These images are integrated into the text and function not only as illustrations, but also as images with their own story to tell. Majerus’ narrative arc follows the twists and turns of madness in a city long associated with mental pathogens and their cures and reveals how the history of psychiatry can be told differently through the lens of visual culture.

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McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) Dec 06, 2018

McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century (Verso, 2017) introduce readers to important work in Anglophone cultural studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, media theory, speculative realism, science studies, Italian and French workerist and autonomist thought, two “imaginative readings of Marx,” and two “unique takes on the body politic.” There are significant implications of these ideas for how we live and work at the contemporary university, and we discussed some of those in our conversation. This is a great book to read and to teach with!

Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here.

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Robert Grossmark, “The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Companioning” (Routledge, 2018) Nov 14, 2018

Can you be a relational analyst who is unobtrusive at the same time? In this book, Robert Grossmark makes a claim that you can and you should! He identifies a vulnerability of the relational style—being that it can place too much emphasis on reflective interactions between patient and therapist, where each party is working to put experience into words. This can be a problem for classically trained analysts too, who put a heavy emphasis on interpretation and insight. Grossmark makes a case that the analyst can be fully engaged and even interactive with her patients, without necessarily operating on the register of language and linguistic symbolization.

In his new book The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Companioning (Routledge, 2018), Grossmark draws from the Object Relations tradition, especially Balint, Bion, and Winnicott, and integrates it with theories from the Relational world of contemporary psychoanalysis. He values the regressive processes which psychoanalysis can induce in patients, returning them to “areas of the self that are unlikely to be reached by dialogic engagement.” And he also values contemporary ideas about how these areas of the self can sometimes only be known through the “flow of enactive engagement” rather than through verbally driven representational modes of communication. Multiple extended clinical vignettes help the reader “live through” the points that Grossmark is making by showing how they work in practice. This illustrates his idea that the most powerful way to reach patients can be by “companioning” them as they show us, rather than tell us, about their internal worlds.

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Nathan Kravis, “On the Couch: A Repressed History of the Analytic Couch from Plato to Freud” (MIT Press, 2017) Nov 07, 2018

Sometimes, a couch is a only a couch, but not in Dr. Nathan Kravis’s new book, On the Couch: A Repressed History of the Analytic Couch from Plato to Freud (MIT Press, 2017). In a live interview conducted in connection with the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, we discuss how the couch has become the leading symbol for psychoanalysis in positive and maligned ways. Dr. Kravis discusses how the couch came to signify reclining, rest, introspection and healing and how important decor was for Freud as he was developing the analytic method. We spoke about the role of the couch in the last hundred years and what the future holds for it. We even speak about our own couches and how patients use them!

There is a brief question-and-answer period as well. This book is beautifully illustrated: Doctor Kravis describes many of the pictures in the book during this interview – you can see a link to some of the photos discussed here.

Christopher Bandini tweets @cebandini.

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Jacqueline Rose ,”Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018) Oct 10, 2018

I left the kitchen radio on while reading Jacqueline Rose‘s Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018) in preparation for this interview. It was June. Putting the book down for a minute to get a glass of water, I heard a news report that the children of refugee women were being removed from them at the American border.

Rose is nothing if not prescient in her thinking and in this book, perhaps especially so. While most of us learn what we think “alla nachträghlichkeit” (after the fact), her mind has the capacity to trip the light fantastic. I follow her writing to discover what I won’t let myself know. Perhaps she has more access than most to the realm of the preconscious. It seems to be the case.

This wide-ranging book (Rose is an exemplary literary critic and feminist theorist so she pulls from multiple intellectual arenas) is largely about motherhood and its enemies. She examines “mother” as a signifier demonstrating how it functions as a repository for blame and misogynist aggression. The book’s twilight message and hot tip for women on the religious right: beware veneration of the maternal for behind it often lies something quite venal.

Mothers, Rose argues, cannot win for losing and yet remain fantastically vested with delivering the impossible: never ending happiness and total safety. “A simple argument,” she writes, “guides this book: that motherhood is, in Western discourse, the place in our culture where we … bury the reality of our own conflicts, of what it means to be fully human.” To be fully human involves being in need of help, failing frequently and feeling unwieldy hate. (Her chapter on hating and the negation of mothers’ hateful feelings and the social impact of that negation is worth the price of the book alone.)

I have the urge to offer an example from the social realm to make clear what Rose is getting at throughout this text—if only because I found myself fogging over at times while reading. My hazy response I believe relates to my resistance to the topic. Hearkening back to Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born (another powerful book that caused me to often drift), Rose dares to look at motherhood as an institution, denaturalizing it to the core.

The example that comes to mind comes from Kristin Luker’s incredible Dubious Conceptions, which debunked the ever-popular idea (see the Clinton Administration, circa 1996 that eviscerated the social safety net) that teen pregnancy creates poverty. The truth, Luker argues, is closer to the reverse: teen poverty may generate teen pregnancy, as poverty can foreclose roads to adulthood, leaving motherhood as a last resort. Poor teen girls who don’t carry to term and poor teen girls who become mothers occupy the same economic strata ten years on. It’s not the pregnancy that hurts their life chances but rather that economic policies are culpable. And yet, teenage mothers, scapegoats really, have long served to hide planned economic inequality; the truth, as it were, is buried in young female flesh.

As our ugly summer wore on, I re-read this book, further preparing for the interview, in addition to spending time in the consulting room, doing what I do: listening to patients elaborate upon themselves. To state the obvious, the psychoanalyst makes her living being inundated with a plethora of words about mothers. To state the further obvious, as temps skyrocketed, Freud’s maxim regarding the repudiation of femininity as bedrock was being powerfully reinforced in America. July and August offered daily opportunities to witness...

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Dagmar Herzog, “Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes” (Cambridge UP, 2017) Sep 07, 2018

‘Create two, three—many Freuds!’ That, Dagmar Herzog shows, was the forgotten slogan of the Cold War. With Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Prof. Herzog carries forward the groundbreaking research program into the politics of desire that already brought us Sex After Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany and Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and The Future of American Politics. The book offers fresh readings of the work of such titanic (and sadly misunderstood) figures as Karen Horney, Robert Stoller, Félix Guattari and Konrad Lorenz—and it will change the way you think about trauma, libido and the New Left. Our conversation focused primarily on the radical currents in Cold War psychoanalysis and what happens when the world comes crashing through the bedroom window.

David Gutherz is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His research centers on the history of the human sciences and revolutionary politics, with a special interest in Fascist and Post-Fascist Italy.

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Elliot Jurist, “Minding Emotions: Cultivating Mentalization in Psychotherapy” (The Guilford Press, 2018) Jul 27, 2018

Elliot Jurist is one of the authors, along with Peter Fonagy, of a prominent book in psychological science called Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self, published in 2002. This book, Minding Emotions: Cultivating Mentalization in Psychotherapy (The Guilford Press, 2018), comes along 15 years later and “corrects” some aspects of the previous book as well as elaborates upon the emotional component of the mentalizing process. What does mentalization have to do with Psychoanalysis? A lot, if you agree with Dr. Jurist who argues that the prospects for psychoanalysis as a thriving discipline within the academic and clinical worlds is greatly enhanced by the conversations and research emerging from the mentalization paradigm.

Minding Emotions accomplishes many tasks, ranging from introducing the science of mentalization, discussing the place of emotions within mentalization studies, proposing the central value of concepts like “mentalizing affectivity” through “autobiographical memory,” analyzing the intersection between mentalization and contemporary psychoanalysis, and critiquing the neoliberal biases hidden within current forms of psychological discourse. The book will be useful and practical to therapists of all kinds, while raising intriguing questions for mature psychoanalytic thinkers about the essential and necessary aspects of the psychoanalytic endeavor.

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Jan Abram and R. D. Hinshelwood, “The Clinical Paradigms of Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott: Comparisons and Dialogues” (Routledge, 2018) Jul 12, 2018

Can one integrate Klein and Winnicott? Or does one have to choose between them when practicing psychoanalysis? These are questions for Abram and Hinshelwood in this podcast interview of two scholars known for their reference books on Klein and Winnicott. Bob Hinshelwood is the author of The Dictionary of Kleinian Thought and Jan Abram is the author of The Language of Winnicott.

Most psychodynamic clinicians practicing today are heavily influenced by Object Relations theory, but many of them do not distinguish between the various kinds of OR theories. This book will give them an excellent opportunity to learn about the fundamental differences between the “object” of the Kleinian infant and the “object” of the Winnicottian one. Since we (therapists) become that object in the transference, Klein and Winnicott give us different paradigms to understand who we might be to our patients in their transference experience.

The Clinical Paradigms of Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott: Comparisons and Dialogues (Routledge, 2018) is relatively short, with concise introductory articles and authentic back-and-forth dialogues between the authors as they clarify their respective paradigms. These dialogues, spiced at times with impatience and frustration, are nevertheless cordial and lucid presentations of the basic ideas and concepts of Klein and Winnicott, with the differences and similarities clearly called forth.

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Noreen Giffney and Eve Watson, “Clinical Encounters in Sexuality: Psychoanalytic Practice and Queer Theory” (Punctum Books, 2017) Jun 28, 2018

Psychoanalysis is a queer theory. That’s what Tim Dean said, according to Eve Watson in the afterword to Clinical Encounters in Sexuality: Psychoanalytic Practice and Queer Theory (Punctum Books, 2017), a new book that she co-edited with Noreen Giffney. In her interview for this podcast, Watson qualifies that declaration by saying that psychoanalysis isn’t always a queer theory, but it should be. “There are many psychoanalyses.”

Queer theory challenges the conventional approach to sexuality that many clinicians absorbed from their training. These clinicians run the risk of imposing outdated and oppressive sexual norms upon their clients. Until the mid-70’s, homosexuality was officially a mental illness and many psychoanalysts continued to try to cure homosexuals of their sexual pathology long after the DSM corrected its culturally determined diagnostic judgment in 1973. Queer theorists argue that this error was not an isolated incident but rather a trend within institutionalized psychoanalysis that continues to limit the effectiveness of psychoanalytic practice today, and in the worst cases, to harm its consumers.

In fact, the paragraphs above may give a distorted view of the book which does not pursue an argument but presents a stimulating conversation among queer theorists and clinicians about psychoanalysis, sexuality, gender, identity, and discourse. The conversation can fly high at times, especially for those who are new to this kind of literature, but the variety of contributors speak in many voices and every reader will find something valuable in this book for deepening their psychoanalytic vision.

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Jonathan House, “Laplanche: An Introduction” (The Unconscious in Translation, 2015) Jun 05, 2018

This interview with Jonathan House is about a book titled Laplanche: An Introduction (The Unconscious in Translation, 2015). Dr. House is not the author of the book (more on that below) but he is the publisher and translator of portions of the book. This interview tries to understand Laplanche: An Introduction in the context of House’s expertise as a teacher, translator, scholar, and publisher of the works of the French psychoanalyst, Jean Laplanche.

Laplanche consists of three essays including a long introductory essay by Dominique Scarfone which presents a broad overview of the evolution and scope of Laplanche’s theory. The second section of the book is an essay written in 1964 by Jean Laplanche and J.B. Pontalis on the origins of phantasy, desire, and the unconscious. This essay was translated by House. The final section of the book is another essay by Jean Laplanche, “Preface to Beyond the Pleasure Principle.”

Dr. House teaches in the literature department at Columbia University and serves as a Training and Supervising Analyst at the University’s Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. He is also the founder of a publishing enterprise called “The Unconscious in Translation” which specializes in translating and publishing the works of Jean Laplanche and other French thinkers. In this interview, I hope to introduce the listener to the flavor of Laplanche’s thinking and to Dr. House’s passion about the importance of Laplanche to the psychoanalytic endeavor as it relates to the sexual unconscious.

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Richard Tuch and Lynn S. Kuttnauer, “Conundrums and Predicaments in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis” (Routledge, 2018) May 18, 2018

“Clinical moments,” as defined in this book, are those therapeutic encounters that challenge the analyst’s capacity to make snap judgments about how to respond to a patient at particularly delicate times. Richard Tuch and Lynn S. Kuttnauer‘s edited collection Conundrums and Predicaments in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2018), presents twelve such moments, each one written by a different analyst, with twenty-five experts who share their ways of thinking about the conundrums and predicaments facing the clinician. The objective of the book is not to teach clinicians about how to rise to the occasion, but rather to illustrate multiple perspectives and approaches and thereby investigate theoretical and technical questions about therapeutic action: How can we best promote change and healing in our patients’ lives?

Each clinical moment is introduced by an editor’s introduction and a “moment in context” which serves as a kind of literature review for the particular issue described. The expert commentators represent most of the prominent schools, including Bionian, Contemporary Freudian, Ego Psychology, French Psychoanalysis, Interpersonalist, Kleinian, Lacanian, Relational, and Self-Psychology. Commentators include Salman Akhtar, Anne Alvarez, Fred Busch, Andrea Celenza, Jay Greenberg, and Theodore Jacobs, among many others. Some of the chapters are particularly provocative and surprising such as the one presented by Lynn Kuttnauer about her patient, an Orthodox Jew who turns to her Rabbi for help in a moment of great need. The commentators for this moment include Rosemary Balsam who provides a compelling feminist perspective and Rach Blass, who argues strongly for a classically intrapsychic, Kleinian approach to the material. This chapter, and the book as a whole, serves as a stimulating and pleasurable exploration into comparative psychoanalysis and a challenge to hone one’s own beliefs and commitments about what one is doing as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist.

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Dominique Scarfone, “The Unpast: The Actual Unconscious” (The Unconscious in Translation, 2015) Apr 24, 2018

Dominique Scarfone‘s The Unpast: The Actual Unconscious (The Unconscious in Translation, 2015) charts “a new itinerary through the vast landscape that is Freud.” For many North American readers, or others who may not appreciate the relevance of drive theory and Freud’s metapsychology in today’s world, this book serves as an inspiring re-visitation of that territory and presents a cogent theory for understanding clinical material and analytic aims in a faithfully Freudian context. The book is also an excellent introduction to many of the ideas that animate the French School of Psychoanalysis, especially for readers who may not have found an accessible way into that rich and stimulating tradition.

The title of the book is a reference to time and history as they affect the unconscious. Scarfone emphasizes the temporal dynamics of the unconscious as opposed to spatial dynamics (topographies and structures). He analyzes the psychoanalytic truism that “the unconscious is timeless” and shows us how that statement is not exactly true in the way people typically think about it. Scarfone says that a close reading of Freud’s work shows us that “time does exist for the unconscious, but somehow the repressed is protected from its corrosive effects.” This observation will ring true to any clinician who has witnessed the destructive repetitions that occur in clients’ lives and that manifest disturbingly in the transference. These repetitive phenomena are the “returns” of unconscious elements that remain presently active, unpast, until through analysis they can be inserted into another kind of time that transforms them into history, rescuing them from occurring as eternal symptoms.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles. He is candidate at The Psychoanalytic Center of California. PhilipJLance@gmail.com

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Irwin Hirsch and Donnell Stern, eds., “The Interpersonal Perspective and Psychoanalysis, 1960s-1990s” (Routledge, 2017) Apr 19, 2018

The history of psychoanalysis is full of twists, turns and also glaring omissions. In their new two-volume set, editors Irwin Hirsch and Donnell Stern attempt to set the record straight in regard to the overlooked contributions of interpersonal writers and thinkers. In this interview, they speak at length about the history of the interpersonal tradition, why it was initially ignored by more traditional approaches, and how it became the one of the foundations of what is known as the relation school today.

The Interpersonal Perspective and Psychoanalysis, 1960s-1990s (Routledge, 2017) and Further Developments in Interpersonal Psychoanalysis 1980s-2010s (Routledge, 2018) are valuable additions to the psychoanalytic canon and essential texts for anyone interested in the development of relational and all contemporary psychoanalytic thinking.

On Twitter @cebandini

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Lana Lin, “Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer” (Fordham UP, 2017) Apr 03, 2018

In April 1923 Sigmund Freud detected a lesion in his mouth that turned out to be cancerous. From diagnosis to his death, he endured 33 surgeries and 10 prostheses. In 1932 alone, Freud consulted with his surgeon Hans Pichler 92 times. Freud’s smoking motivated much of the fussiness with his prosthetic jaw: it had to be right at the palate edge, with optimal occlusion so as to get the most out of his cigars. For Freud, smoking facilitated writing and intellectual creativity; it provided exquisite enjoyment. An inanimate object thus served as a conduit of both vitality and grave illness—a testament to the entanglement, indeed, the indistinguishability of the life and death drives.

In 1977, after a biopsy of a tumor in her right breast, Audre Lorde fantasized about lopping off the agent of her destruction like “a she-wolf chewing off a paw caught in a trap.” (56) In the manner of a Kleinian infant, she directed her rage at the persecutory breast that betrayed her (once again) and ceased being her own. Lorde turned her poetry and personal survival into political acts of reparation, linking the ravages of cancer to racial and sexual injury and offering herself to queer communities of color as an object of introjection and identification.

In 1992, on the anniversary of her breast cancer diagnosis, queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was en route to yet another academic lecture. She sat in a plane on a runway in frigid Toronto watching Pepto-Bismol-pink anti-icing fluid run down the window beside her. Seized by nauseating horror, she recalled the bloody lymphatic discharge draining from her body in the weeks following her mastectomy. In 1996, after imaging revealed a spinal metastasis that would ultimately kill her, Sedgwick emerged as a patient-teacher in her polyphonic A Dialogue on Love (1999), an account of a psychodynamic treatment intermixed with her poetry and her therapist’s notes. Through autobiographically inflected theoretical writings and the advice column, “Off My Chest,” Sedgwick engaged in what she called good pedagogy, instructing readers about love and mourning in the “prognosis time” of incremental bodily loss.

Lana Lin brings together the stories of Freud, Lorde, and Sedgwick, as well as insights from her own struggle with breast cancer in the tour de force, Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer (Fordham University Press, 2017). With her three transferential figures, Lin explores what it means to loosen one’s grip on objects, to live with self-estrangement and threats to bodily integrity, and to understand loss as the maintenance of relationality. As cancer fragments and changes one’s relationship to time, it becomes a catalyst for reparation, invention, and love.

Anna Fishzon, PhD, is Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol, UK. She is a candidate at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) and author of Fandom, Authenticity, and Opera: Mad Acts and Letter Scenes in Fin-de-siecle Russia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). She can be reached at afishzon@gmail.com.

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Alenka Zupancic, “What is Sex?” (MIT Press, 2017) Mar 14, 2018

Alenka Zupancic has done the unthinkable. She has managed to write a fun and exciting book about sex with only cursory mention of things naughty. What is Sex? (MIT Press, 2017) avoids fluff, heterosexual intercourse, and the gender binary (and gender altogether) and instead cogently explains sexual difference, the elusive “beyond” of the pleasure principle, infantile sexuality, the materiality of signifiers, the hole in being, the non-coincidence of truth and knowledge, primal repression, passion, the event, and the political importance of psychoanalysis.

Sex for Zupancic is an ontological problem, co-extensive with a disturbance in reality, a signifying gap and structural impediment. Sex is attached to that which cannot be fully known or embodied and is therefore directly related to the unconscious. Subjectivity emerges from within the fault entailed in signification, as does surplus enjoyment. Important here, too, is the well-worn notion, but with a twist, that there is no reality prior or external to discourse. Zupancic reminds us that nature is not a pure and full presence before the arrival of the human but an object produced by and for science. The Real is an effect of language: the signifier invades the signified and alters it from within. Finally, and perhaps most mind-blowingly, the human in her formulation is not that which is merely in excess of the animal (dressing it up in language and culture, let’s say) but, rather, an unfinished and dysfunctional dimension: humanity as a veil that simultaneously points and gives form to animals’ ontological incompleteness.

We cover these complex ideas in the interview, as well as other pressing matters: the disappearance of the hysteric, the desert of the post-oedipal (the only one who managed to escape the Oedipus Complex, Lacan noted, was Oedipus himself), and the status of love at the end of analysis.

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Roger Frie, “Not in My Family: German Memory and Responsibility After the Holocaust” (Oxford UP, 2017) Jan 30, 2018

What if you suddenly discovered a cherished member of your family was a Nazi? How would you make sense of the code of silence that had kept an uncomfortable reality at bay? How would you resolve the wartime suffering of your family with their moral culpability for the Holocaust? Roger Frie explores the thorny issue of historical memory and intergenerational trauma in his new award winning book Not in My Family: German Memory and Responsibility After the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2017). In an intensely personal confrontation with the Nazi past in his own family, Roger searches for ways to navigate historical traumas and reconcile the memory of his grandfather with the knowledge of his deeds.

Roger Frie is a registered psychologist and interdisciplinary scholar in the fields of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and history. He publishes and lectures widely on historical trauma, culture, memory, and human interaction. Roger has also edited a collection of essays bringing together historians and psychoanalysts to further examine the dynamics of intergenerational trauma entitled History Flows Through Us: Germany, the Holocaust, and the Importance of Empathy (Routledge, 2018).

Ryan Stackhouse is a historian of modern Europe specializing in Germany and political policing under dictatorship. His research exploring Gestapo enforcement practices toward different social groups is nearing completion under the working title Policing Hitler’s Critics. He also cohosts the Third Reich History Podcast and can be reached at john.ryan.stackhouse@gmail.com or @Staxomatix

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Richard Tuch, “Psychoanalytic Method in Motion” (Routledge, 2017) Dec 26, 2017

Richard Tuch is an analyst in Los Angeles who specializes in writing and teaching about psychoanalytic technique. In this book, he succinctly reviews a number of major historic controversies regarding technique, fairly presenting both sides and arguing that psychoanalytic practice tends to evolve toward a middle ground after the pendulum swings too far in favor of an overvalued idea.

Tuch was trained as a modern ego psychologist but he is steeped in other schools as well, especially British Object Relations, the Middle School, and the Relational School. He is well-versed in the literature about mentalization, theory of mind, and meta-cognition. In Psychoanalytic Method in Motion: Controversies and Evolution in Clinical Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2017), he covers debates concerning free association, transference interpretations, enactment, empathy, the analysts authority, and the scientific evidence for psychoanalysis. His writing is lucid, accessible to a lay audience, open-minded, and solidly based in the reality of the day-to-day interactions between analysts and patients. While he is unabashedly pluralistic and multi-lingual in terms of psychoanalytic theory, he is not afraid to disclose his biases and personal conclusions about where a contemporary analyst can confidently stand.

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Dana Birksted-Breen, “The Work of Psychoanalysis: Sexuality, Time and the Psychoanalytic Mind” (Routledge, 2017) Nov 07, 2017

When the Editor-in-Chief of The International Journal of Psychoanalysis writes a book about the work of psychoanalysis, interested parties ought to take notice. But alas, the world of psychoanalysis speaks many languages and readers often choose authors who speak their own tongue. The Work of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2017) by Dana Birksted-Breen, while written in English, listens to international voices in the psychoanalytic community and considers them from the perspective of an analyst who is a multilingual traditionalist with a contemporary ear. The subtitle of the book, Sexuality, Time and the Psychoanalytic Mind, illustrates the point. The author adheres to a French-inflected Freudian premise that sexuality is foundational to psychoanalytic work while at the same time pushing forward the frontiers of theory with her reflections on the theme of time. These reflections are fresh, original, and convincing essays on the temporal processes that are essential to the psychoanalytic endeavor.

Birksted-Breen’s book addresses the topic announced in the title—the work of psychoanalysis, taking up questions of sexuality, identity, and time. A central chapter on the “penis-as-link” demonstrates her capacity for honoring, reconciling, and cleaning up theoretical muddles while giving birth to a novel concept. While this chapter focuses on the male member, its conceptualization arises from decades of thinking about the feminine in psychoanalysis. Many readers are likely to take away a renewed understanding and appreciation of the centrality of the feminine and of time as components of the psychoanalytic mind.

Dr. Birksted-Breen was born in New York, raised in Paris, and trained in London. In the book, she virtually bridges the channel by integrating key ingredients of the French and British traditions but does not quite cross the pond, citing theoretical emphases that distance her from the American love affair with relational psychoanalysis. She does not criticize other schools but cautions that each one has its own “grammar” that limits any multi-lingual project and obligates the writer to situate the intellectual ancestry of every psychoanalytic term as a necessary discipline for theoretical consistency.

Do not fear that the book is an exercise in psychoanalytic pedantry. On the contrary, I cannot imagine that all readers will not agree that Birksted-Breen’s book captures the essential spirit of our profession and presents a brilliant exposition of the uniquely compelling genius of this thing we call psychoanalysis.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles. He is candidate at The Psychoanalytic Center of California. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com.

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Antonino Ferro and Luca Nicoli, “The New Analysts Guide to the Galaxy: Questions about Contemporary Psychoanalysis” (Karnac, 2017) Sep 26, 2017

The “tongue in cheek” title of The New Analyst’s Guide to the Galaxy: Questions about Contemporary Psychoanalysis (Karnac Books, 2017), which references the hugely popular Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, hints at the playful and lighthearted tone of the conversation that unfolds between co-authors Luca Nicoli (the “new analyst”) and Antonino Ferro (the Guide) in this mildly irreverent but ultimately serious statement about the future of psychoanalysis. Nicoli is a recent graduate of an Italian institute, struggling to integrate his understanding of the time-honored, psychoanalytic writers that he studied in seminar with the revolutionary thinking of Antonino Ferro who argues that orthodoxy is a mortal threat to the vitality of psychoanalysis.

Antonino Ferro is the foremost spokesperson for a theory known as Bionian Field Theory. This theory blends Bionian conceptions (e.g. containing, beta and alpha elements, dreaming) with contemporary field theory (a way of understanding intersubjectivity) and Italian narratology (the analyst and patient pay attention to and develop the characters and scripts that appear in the field of the consulting room as a way of dreaming forward unprocessed emotional material).

In this podcast interview, young Dr. Nicoli, who considers himself a contemporary relational analyst, speaks about the difficulty, and perhaps impossibility, of integrating “standard” relational psychoanalysis with Bionian Field Theory. The book is not a theoretical essay, however, but records a series of questions that Nicoli poses to Ferro about clinical practice, as well as psychoanalytic education. For example, is it necessary for candidates to spend so much time reading Freud? Should analysts charge patients for cancelled sessions? Is the couch necessary? Ferro answers questions like these in light of his theoretical model, provocatively and humorously, but with a deeply grateful attitude for the dreams of our psychoanalytic ancestors.

Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles. He is a candidate at The Psychoanalytic Center of California. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com.

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Margaret Crastnapol, “Micro-trauma: A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Cumulative Psychic Injury” (Routledge, 2015) Sep 08, 2017

Little murders, unkind cutting back, uneasy intimacy and connoisseurship gone awry are just a few of the provocative relational concepts Dr. Margaret Crastnopol describes and explores in her new book Micro-trauma: A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Cumulative Psychic Injury (Routledge, 2015)

Trained in the interpersonal tradition, Dr. Crastnopol writes about how patients experience the slights that occur in their everyday interactions. These exchanges, in an earlier day, in a prior theoretical orientation, may have been dismissed as resistance, or interpreted mainly along the lines of drive theory or Oedipal conflict. Without dismissing the value of these prior viewpoints, or treating her patient reports as superficial or tangential, Dr. Crastnopol mines this material for its own clinical richness. In this interview we explore many of the book’s essential ideas, how Dr. Crastnopol came to write it, and even touch upon how where we practice geographically may influence our analytic work.

Pragmatic and clearly written, Micro-trauma is a valuable resource for all practicing clinicians.

Christopher Bandini tweets @cebandini.

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Aner Govrin, “Conservative and Radical Perspectives on Psychoanalytic Knowledge” (Routledge, 2016) Sep 07, 2017

This is an interview for the pessimists among us: Worried that your career as an analyst is over? That CBT is about to enact world domination over all things psychological? Plagued by ideas that your institute training was all for naught?

Aner Govrin is Director of the doctoral program in Psychoanalysis and Hermeneutics at Bar Ilan University in Israel, a psychoanalyst, and memberof the Tel Aviv Institue for Contemporary Psychoanalysis (TAICP). His keen intelligence and big picture perspective will assuage at least a modicum of your despair.

Employing ideas from the sociology of knowledge, Govrin’s Conservative and Radical Perspectives on Psychoanalytic Knowledge: The Fascinated and the Disenchanted (Routledge, 2016) both expands and contracts our point of view on psychoanalysis, organizing the profession into communities of the “fascinated” and the “troubled.” The tension between these two groups promises, if we can avoid collapsing into hostile splitting, to create a state of almost perpetual renewal within the field.

According to Govrin, we need the fascinated–those from schools of thought that tend to have charismatic leaders and theoretical ideas that are a kind of “set piece” such as Klein, Lacan, Bion, Kohut or Spotnitz–to dive deeply into their theories, creatively expanding upon them. At the same time, we also need the thinking of the scientifically and philosophically troubled–those who seek to move the field towards interacting with other disciplines, who pursue notions of truth and efficacy, who queried bedrock notions of the analyst’s authority, dismantling the idea that there is only one person’s psyche in the room–to keep things moving.

Offering a warning about the ways in which the post-modern turn in the profession might lead to creative torpor, Govrin suggests we embrace the fascinated among us, applauding their diving deeply and fully into their demi-monde. He reminds us as well that behind every troubled community lies a fascinated community about to come into its own.

Govrin believes that psychoanalysis displays a marvelous porosity, and so has the ability to make use of myriad cultural shifts. If institutes can encourage creativity amongst candidates and faculty, he argues, rather than demand strict adherence to a “party line,” the field promises to proliferate and thrive.

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Patricia Gherovici, “Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference” (Routledge, 2017) Aug 31, 2017

Freudian theory laid the foundation for a felicitous engagement of psychoanalysis with transgender experience. Building on the work of sexologists, Freud not only posited a universal bisexuality, thereby implying that we are all transgender in our unconscious, but also indexed something in sexuality that exceeds our grasp. His most controversial claim, perhaps, was that human sexuality itself is faulty and symptomatic — that our confrontation with the enigma and overproximity of parental desire never leads to a resolution but rather to the formation of mediating fantasies. Freud instructed his colleagues to listen attentively to these fantasies and to be open to sexuality in all its manifestations and vicissitudes: desire and the drives, the problem of sexual difference, and the mortality of the sexed body. It was precisely these ethics, this Freud, to which Lacan urged a return and from which he believed psychoanalysis had strayed. Disturbed by ego psychologists’ focus on adaptation to prevailing sociocultural norms, Lacan instead emphasized and elaborated upon the traumatic aspect of sexuality — the difficulties of assuming a sexed body and of regulating jouissance. He stressed listening to what analysands actually say, as opposed to what they mean, in order to approach the locus from which an unbearable truth speaks.

Yet, historically, psychoanalysts and institutional psychoanalysis have been tone-deaf to transgender desire. Freudians have linked transsexuality to perversion and borderline disorders. Lacanians have deemed transgender expression an indicator of psychosis. Such pathologization has failed transgender subjects, asserts Patricia Gherovici, in her brilliant and provocative Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference (Routledge, 2017). Despite availing themselves of various forms of talk therapy, trans patients remain wary of psychoanalytic treatments and the suicide attempt rate in the trans population is astonishingly high.

Gherovici argues persuasively that psychoanalysis and the trans community have much to offer one another and that Lacan’s sinthome and sexuation formulae serve as especially productive, nonpathologizing frameworks for such a dialogue. She demonstrates how transgender discourse intervenes in and transforms key Lacanian concepts and maintains that psychoanalytic listening can alleviate the anguish felt by transgender subjects, helping them to live. When I press her on this point, inquiring how analysts might attend to the singularity of each case and still manage to generalize about the category of transgender experience, Gherovici, in an adroit dialectical maneuver, finds the universal in the particular. Transgender expression, she explains, offers novel ways of thinking about subjects not wholly dependent on phallic signification and disrupts the binary logic imposed by the phallus as universal signifier. Trans patients’ particular struggles with gendered embodiment and the symbolization of sex bring to light the trouble inherent in taking ownership of the body for all speaking beings. Covering a vast conceptual and evidentiary terrain, Gherovici moves from the public sphere to the clinic to show how increasing transgender visibility and activism paradoxically subvert identitarian claims, making explicit the constitutive elements and continual failures of Man and Woman.

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Lewis Kirshner, “Intersubjectivity in Psychoanalysis: A Model for Theory and Practice” (Routledge, 2017) Aug 29, 2017

It has been said that we cannot not be in intersubjectivity. During the past decades, this fact has challenged the traditional psychoanalytic project. Various psychoanalytic schools have addressed the challenge in their own way, as does Dr. Lewis Kirshner in his new book Intersubjectivity in Psychoanalysis: A Model for Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2017). He approaches the topic from the perspective of an academic with a strong background in phenomenology as well as psychoanalysis. The book relies upon an interdisciplinary perspective that appreciates how intersubjectivity is a broad concept inflected by infant research, neuroscience, semiotics, phenomenology, and not but not least, psychoanalysis. While this book should serve as a reference guide for any analyst writing about intersubjectivity because of its superb literature review, it is more than a theoretical essay. We get to see how a philosophical scholar makes sense of intersubjectivity for his own analytic practice. The book is interspersed with clinical material that shows the author thinking deeply about the processes at work in the analytic encounter. The author’s clinical material reflects a strong Lacanian preference and he stays away from a comprehensive comparison of how intersubjectivity gets played out in various schools, but he appreciates and converses with authors such as Winnicott, Modell, Bion, Benjamin, Aron, and many others.

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Adrienne Harris and Steven Kuchuck, eds. “The Legacy of Sandor Ferenczi: From Ghost to Ancestor” (Routledge 2015) Aug 16, 2017

Adrienne Harris and Steven Kuchuck‘s The Legacy of Sandor Ferenczi: From Ghost to Ancestor (Routledge, 2015) contributes to the resurgence of interest in Sandor Ferenczi since the early 1990s when Harris published another book also titled The Legacy of Sandor Ferenczi with co-editor Lewis Aron. As Harris says in the interview, the resurgence is partially explained by the work of Steven Mitchell, relational psychoanalysis, and the Vietnam war! War is of particular interest to Harris because it challenges the illusion of intrapsychic privacy and self-containment that traditional psychoanalysis cultivates. War is traumatizing and Ferenczi did not avoid investigating its shattering, splitting, dissociating effects as well as the effects of other disrupting impingements from the external work, in contrast to the classical psychoanalytic emphasis on the elaboration of personal fantasy.

The book contains 17 chapters by historians and analysts, including discussions that help to show how contemporary psychoanalysis was anticipated by Ferenczi’s courageous experimentation. After reading this book, you cannot help but feel profound sympathy for Ferenczi’s painful struggle as he sought to develop an analytic theory and method amid great personal and social suffering. He was not able to escape war or trauma, and as a result he could not avoid coping with how this reality affected his work with patients. His writings about this struggle show us the emergence of a psychoanalytic paradigm that considers the psychology of the analyst as important as the psychology of the patient in therapeutic processes. In addition to the scholarly historical material in the volume, the book contains essays by analysts with clinical material that illuminates how Ferenczi’s two-person psychology unfolds in the consulting room today. These essays demonstrate the liveliness of contemporary psychoanalysis when animated by the spirit of this newly honored ancestor.

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Jared Russell, “Nietzsche and the Clinic: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, Metaphysics” (Karnac, 2017) Aug 13, 2017

While I was in college, undergrads reeking of stale coffee and cigarettes paraded on gothic quads with flannel armor, black-rimmed glasses, messenger bags, and paperback copies of Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche. Mired in misinterpretation, budding philosophers of various political stripes dreamed of amoral Ubermenschian architects expressing “will to power” through design of phallic buildings and superior socialities. This memory haunted me years later while teaching On the Genealogy of Morals to first-year college students but was finally vanquished by Jared Russell’s excellent Nietzsche and the Clinic: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, Metaphysics (Karnac, 2017).

Clinicians familiar with stereotypical and distorted readings of Nietzsche (almost as common as those of Freud) will be surprised and invigorated by Russell’s book, which not only synthesizes philosophy and psychoanalytic theory, but also stages a highly productive encounter between academic work and the practice of psychoanalysis. Each chapter focuses on a distinct psychoanalytic orientation and contains a clinical vignette illustrating the relevance of Nietzsche’s ideas. With rigor and openness, each chapter asks: what does Nietzsche offer the clinic?

Russell discusses Nietzschean notions like perspectivism, will to power, and ressentiment, as well as the philosopher’s critiques of metaphysics, commercial culture, authoritarianism, and morality. He then demonstrates the ways Nietzsche’s thought augments and refines psychoanalytic concepts: the Freudian drive, Helene Deutsch’s “as-if personality,” Alan Bass’s “concreteness,” Melanie Klein’s envy and projective identification, Winnicottian play, and Lacan’s late teachings on jouissance and the real unconscious. But perhaps the most original aspect of the book resides in Russell’s ability to put Nietzsche into dialogue with specific elements of analytic clinical practice: interpretation, free association and evenly suspended attention, and knowledge and truth as they emerge for each analysand.

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Naoko Wake, “Private Practices: Harry Stack Sullivan, the Science of Homosexuality, and American Liberalism” (Rutgers UP, 2011) Aug 01, 2017

The influential yet controversial psychiatrist, Harry Stack Sullivan was pioneering in his treatment of schizophrenia however the way he lived privately did not always correspond to the theoretical ideas he espoused publicly. With meticulous research and access to clinical and historical records, historianNaoko Wake, examines the life and work of this pioneer of American Psychoanalysis from an unconventional perspective, quite different than the usual biographical approach. In this interview we discuss Sullivan’s sometimes contradictory life work, especially his time at Sheppard-Pratt Hospital, his private practice in New York, and his wider, global ambitions later in life.

Private Practices: Harry Stack Sullivan, the Science of Homosexuality, and American Liberalism (Rutgers University Press, 2011), is compelling book and a welcome addition to the historical record of American Psychoanalysis.

Find Chris Bandini on Twitter @cebandini

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Bruce Fink, “A Clinical Introduction to Freud: Techniques for Everyday Practice” (Norton, 2017) Jul 20, 2017

Bruce Fink joins me once again, this time to discuss his latest book, A Clinical Introduction to Freud: Techniques For Everyday Practice (W. W. Norton & Co., 2017). What prompted Fink, a world-renowned Lacanian analyst, to return to Freud? In the spirit of Lacan, he informs us at the outset that he was always already, and forever will be, Freudian. This does not mean, of course, that Fink is uncritical of Freud. Carefully, brilliantly, and often playfully, he reads Studies on Hysteria, The Interpretation of Dreams, and the Rat Man and Dora cases, drawing out the clinical relevance of key Freudian theoretical concepts, and punctuating (the many) moments Freud strayed from his own clinical recommendations.

The death knell of Freudianism has been sounded by various groups—some expected, like psychiatrists, neuroscientists, cognitive behavioral therapists, and feminists—and others less so, including Freudians themselves. Few would deny that Freud, in important and unfortunate ways, was a man of the late Victorian era: much ink has been spilled on his patriarchal values, cocaine habit, casual misogyny, and authoritarian attitude toward patients and colleagues. From his cases and letters we know, too, that Freud made almost every error he warned against in his papers on technique: he bombarded patients with interpretations, dispensed advice, intimidated, and asked them for favors. Nonetheless, even Freud’s detractors view him as a revolutionary and influential thinker who, despite failures to follow through on his own ideals and iconoclastic assertions, changed fundamental beliefs regarding gender and sexuality, art and literature, subjectivity, and social life. He continues to have a profound hold on non-Freudian psychoanalysts, even as they rename his metapsychological concepts and claim to leave him in the dust.

Fink provides early clinicians with an excellent guide to Freudian theory and technique, paying special attention to dream interpretation, symptoms, the handling of transference, diagnosis, and the facilitation of free association. Periodically, he inserts his own vivid clinical examples while underlining that which remains valuable in Freud and reading him to the letter. And isn’t this the most generous way to read Freud’s work—armed both with sharp critique and an appreciation of his path-breaking ideas? “The only good father,” to quote Lacan, “is a dead one.”

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Annie Reiner, “Bion and Being: Passion and the Creative Mind” (Karnac, 2012) Jul 16, 2017

Reading Annie Reiner‘s Bion and Being: Passion and the Creative Mind (Karnac, 2012) was a spiritual experience for me. Dr. Reiner illuminates the often-obscure ideas of Wilfred Bion with seemingly effortless and masterful recourse to poetry, literature, philosophy, and the visual arts. The book is a serenely beautiful extended meditation on Bion’s O and a rigorous and lucid explication of a theoretical paradigm that shapes a powerful psychoanalytic vision. In addition to the soulful consolation that I got from the book, I was grateful to observe how a Bionian analyst works with patients. Dr. Reiner shows how Bion’s vision has profound implications for how to work with clients and she demonstrates how she has shaped that vision into an extremely coherent and powerful tool for analyzing the lives that we are privileged to touch as therapists. This book, an example of psychoanalytic writing at its best, is for professionals and students wanting to know more about Bion, for clinicians needing new inspiration for their practice, and for the general reader who appreciates the possibilities of psychoanalysis as a program for life.

Annie Reiner is a senior faculty member at the Psychoanalytic Center of California. She is a poet, playwright, and author-illustrator of children’s books. Her psychoanalytic writings have been published in many journal and anthologies. Recently, she edited a festschrift collection of essays about the work of James Grotstein, published in 2015. She maintains a private practice in Beverly Hills, California.

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Mark Solms, “The Feeling Brain: Selected Papers in Neuropsychoanalysis” (Karnac, 2015) Jul 03, 2017

If you steered yourself away from books about brain science because you were interested in something completely different–psychoanalysis–then this is the book for you! This book will renew your appreciation for the revolutionary discovery and urgent need for psychoanalysis, as argued by one of the world’s leading neuroscientists.

Mark Solms invented the word “neuropsychoanalyis” twenty years ago because he believed that brain science at that time was still in a primitive state of learning about “wetware,” when in fact the brain gives rise to a mind which has critical things to teach us about the brain. Psychoanalysis is the science of the mental that challenges the arrogant self-sufficiency of a purely biological approach that excludes the subjective phenomena that characterizes the healthy brain. The brain is not just an object, it is also a subject.

The Feeling Brain (Karnac, 2015) is a collection of previously published papers that were selected to provide an introduction to the field of neuropsychoanalysis. Solms’ oeuvre constitutes the most impressive “return to Freud” since Lacan. Students of psychoanalysis will benefit from a re-visioning of Freudian concepts that brings them back to life in faithful devotion to Freud’s enduring commitment to the embodied nature of the mental apparatus.

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Jon Mills, “Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality” (Routledge, 2016) May 21, 2017

There are many fronts in the argument against the existence of a god or gods and veracity of religious narratives. Some familiar approaches are to critique the philosophical underpinnings of religious ideology or to make a case from the perspective of scientific evidence and the physical laws of reality. Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality (Routledge, 2016), written by Dr. Jon Mills, argues from the perspective of psychology and posits that god is a psychological creation signifying ultimate ideality. In other words, He is the ultimate wish fulfillment, the forgiving all-powerful father you always wanted, the absolution of all your fears, the antidote to death. Mills writes that the conception of god is the manifestation of humanity’s denial and response to natural deprivation. He promotes secular humanism and a personal search for the numinous as a positive, life-affirming alternative.

Dr. Jon Mills is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, active clinical psychologist, as well as Professor of Psychology & Psychoanalysis at the Adler Graduate Professional School in Toronto. He is the author and editor of many books and recipient of awards, including the the Otto Weininger Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in 2015, given by the Canadian Psychological Association.

Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Universite Laval in Quebec City.

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Laurence A. Rickels, “The Psycho Records” (Wallflower Press, 2016) Mar 21, 2017

Reading Laurence Rickels‘ The Psycho Records (Wallflower Press, 2016) gave me the urge to ask random strangers questions like: Are you haunted by Alfred Hitchcock’s famous shower scene? How do you feel about Norman Bates and other cinematic killers pathologically attached to their mothers? Does the thought of Anthony Perkins impersonating his dead mother and stabbing Janet Leigh make you uncomfortable and scared? Induce an uncanny sensation? Or does it seem dated, campy, even comical? Rickels is interested precisely in these vicissitudes of the primal shower scene–what he calls the “Psycho Effect”–as it is taken up and therapeutically transformed by subsequent slasher and splatter films.

It is not an accident that Hitchcock chose the shower stall as the site for his most famous moment of Schauer, the German cognate meaning “horror.” Traumatized American soldiers returning from World War II, dubbed “psychos,” were transposed into filmic psycho murderers straddling psychosis and psychopathy. Norman was perhaps the first such hero of variegated diagnosis. In the 1970s and 1980s we encountered less exalted figures, like the cannibal Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Freddy Krueger of Nightmare on Elm Street fame. Still less sophisticated mass murderers followed: the zombies revived post-9/11 and, eventually, motive-less serial killers captured with the aid of “objective” forensics. All these characters address the difficulty of separation and mourning, the pull toward fusion with Mother, the trauma of the cut, survival, and industrial killing–the intimate violence of Nazi doctors and the impersonal push-button battles of the Gulf War.

Many slasher and splatter films also tell the story of a newly emergent social category, subgenre, and audience member–the teen. Rickels devotes parts of the book to the postwar invention of adolescence, reading closely D. W. Winnicott’s papers on antisocial teenagers and juvenile delinquency. We all experience adolescence as a brush with psychopathy, Rickels tells us; for many it is the path not taken. Perhaps this explains the appeal of the psycho, our “near-miss double.” In psychoanalytic terms, “there but for the grace of the good object go I.” [5]

Other topics covered in our interview and in The Psycho Records include vampirism, the couple and the crowd, scream memories, laughter, and substitution. As those familiar with Rickels’ books might expect, we often touch on one of the great themes of his oeuvre: mourning. Listen in!

Laurence A. Rickels, PhD is a psychotherapist and scholar of literature, film, and psychoanalysis. He is Sigmund Freud Professor of Philosophy and Media at the European Graduate School (EGS) and most recently was professor of art and theory at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Karlsruhe, Germany.

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Todd McGowan, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets” (Columbia UP, 2016) Mar 19, 2017

Todd McGowan‘s Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets (Columbia University Press, 2016) elegantly employs psychoanalytic thinking to unpack the lure of capitalism. He argues that we are drawn to capitalism because, under an overt promise to bring us what we want, it gives us what we need: lack.

Every commodity disappoints. And that’s the point.

Satisfaction, that moment when all is well and good, flutters rapidly, blessedly away. What is so great, so crucial, about lack? Though we pine for relief, nothing kills desire like abundance. (Spoiler alert: should there be an equitable redistribution of wealth, we would still suffer a hunger for the lost object which, according to McGowan, not employing Kleinian thinking, was never attainable in the first place.) If we did not experience ourselves as missing something we might never get out of bed–and, as clinicians know, why it can be purely ruinous to gratify a depressive patient.

You buy those boots, the ones you had to have, and within moments of wearing them, your heart sinks. That car you finally got your hands on? Driving it out of the lot you wonder, “should I have just leased it?” Desire is an engine best run on less than half a tank.

The paradox of capitalism, the way it lets us down, gets a full treatment here. Capitalism reclines on McGowan’s couch and he offers it a few interpretations that shake loose its obsessional and hysterical tendencies. He works with capitalism effectively, not arousing its defenses, because he understands it as caught in a trap of its own making. Embracing Beyond The Pleasure Principle and Lacanian thinking, he asks capitalism how come the ends are more important than the means, and doesn’t it miss the sublime? He also treats the reader, reminding us that we need to not have what we want in order to get what we need.

The interview sails along, if I say so myself, and, given the political surround, offers a good conversation to get into. The author would love to hear from us and has asked that I post his email right here, todd.mcgowan@uvm.edu.

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Brent Willock, et.al. “Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference: Navigating the Divide” (Routledge, 2017) Mar 13, 2017

Literature and training in diversity and multiculturalism typically emphasize cultural differences–how to identify them, and the importance of honoring them. But does such an emphasis neglect other important dimensions of cross-cultural relating? Brent Willock, Lori Bohm, and Rebecca Curtis, editors of the book Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference: Navigating the Divide (Routledge, 2017), argue that finding similarities in our universal human longings and experiences are also key. Their book contains contributions from various experts describing how they navigate the divide of difference, with patient, everyday people, and within themselves. In our interview, we delve into these topics and discuss clinical and non-clinical examples to illustrate how these concepts come to life. Our discussion, and the book, are timely and relevant to our universal struggle to understand and connect with one another.

Brent Willock is president of the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Board Member of the Canadian Institute for Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and on the faculty of the Institute for the Advancement of Self Psychology.

Lori Bohm is Supervising Analyst and Faculty at the William Alanson White Institute, and former Director of their Center for Applied Psychoanalysis and Intensive Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Programs.

Rebecca Curtis is Professor of Psychology at Adelphi University, as well as Faculty and Supervisor at the William Alanson White

Eugenio Duarte is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in LGBTQ issues, eating and body image problems, and relationship problems. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

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Philip Rosenbaum, “Making our Ideas Clear: Pragmatism in Psychoanalysis” (Information Age Publishing, 2015) Jan 04, 2017

Pragmatism, as a philosophical concept, is often misunderstood and misapplied. Fortunately, I had the chance to speak with Philip Rosenbaum, psychoanalyst and editor of the book Making our Ideas Clear: Pragmatism in Psychoanalysis (Information Age Publishing, 2015)about what pragmatism really is and how it informs clinical theory and praxis. We discuss how pragmatisms influence reaches far back to the beginnings of psychoanalysis, in Sigmund Freud’s original ideas, and up through the ways clinicians conceptualize their work in the present. Dr. Rosenbaum’s book and our discussion raise prescient questions about how we evaluate our ideas, questions that will be relevant to clinicians and non-clinicians alike.

Philip Rosenbaum is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst trained at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis & Psychology. He serves as Director of Counseling and Psychological Services at Haverford College, co-editor of The Journal of College Student Psychotherapy, and associate editor for the journal Contemporary Psychoanalysis.

Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. (www.eugenioduartephd.com) is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in LGBTQ issues, eating and body image problems, and relationship problems. Follow him on Twitter.

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Irwin Hirsch, “The Interpersonal Tradition: The Origins of Psychoanalytic Subjectivity” (Routledge, 2015) Dec 09, 2016

The Interpersonal School of psychoanalysis developed independent of the classical tradition in the United States early in the twentieth century, and was a harbinger to the relational thinking of the current day. Yet, the contributions of interpersonal analysts have often been glossed over or ignored completely. In his new book of collected papers, The Interpersonal Tradition: The Origins of Psychoanalytic Subjectivity (Routledge, 2015) Dr. Irwin Hirsch, writes in depth of the contributions of interpersonalism to psychoanalysis, including a fuller understanding of key concepts such as countertransference enactments and the impact of the analysts subjectivity on the therapeutic relationship. In this interview we discuss some of the key figures in interpersonal thought, how Dr. Hirsch became an analyst (and a writer) and his provocative and honest opinions on many aspects of current psychoanalytic theory and practice.

Find Chris Bandini on Twitter @cebandini

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Orna Ophir, “On the Borderland of Madness: Psychosis, Psychoanalysis, and Psychiatry in Postwar USA” (Routledge, 2015) Nov 07, 2016

When it comes to the history of psychoanalysis and psychiatry in the United States, to paraphrase Luce Irigaray, one never stirs without the other. While Freud sent Theodore Reik across the ocean to promote lay analysis, A.A. Brill, president of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, was preparing to divorce the International Psychoanalytic Association. Brill, driven by a fear that psychoanalysis might be seen as quackery and so discredited, sought to guarantee that the only people allowed to practice psychoanalysis in America were medical doctors. Then came the Anschluss: humanitarian efforts were made to bring the very-same IPA members the Americans sought to separate from onto American soil.

This is a pretty well known tale–told by Gay, Hale, Roazen and others; enter Orna Ophir’s book, On the Borderland of Madness: Psychosis, Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry in Postwar USA (Routledge, 2015), offering a much needed explanation of how psychoanalysis in America lost its patina.

This intellectual history closely studies, via a reading of key journals, the way two professions, for years dancing in close embrace, began to fall out of step. In the same way that the birth of a child with developmental disabilities can reveal a cleavage in what was once thought to be a secure marital bond, debates over the treatment of psychosis led to the eventual separation of two longstanding bedfellows: psychiatry and psychoanalysis.

Ophir pieces together the confusing, and previously untold, tale of how psychoanalysis came to be marginalized–and what role psychosis played therein, for its role was key. To carry the conflicted parent metaphor a little further, when a child suffers from psychic distress one member of a couple might seek to understand that suffering in genetic terms while the other spouse might examine the kind of care shown that child: the story of psychiatrically influenced psychoanalysis and non-psychiatrically influenced psychoanalysis line up similarly.

While it is commonly known that the release of new medications to treat psychotic pain beginning in the late 1950s, and the birth of community psychiatry in the 70s, and of course the release of the anti-psychodynamic DSM-III in the 80s all played a role in arguments for the superfluity of analytic treatment for psychosis, Ophir argues that psychoanalysis got sidelined because American psychoanalysts, given their long-standing embrace of psychiatry, were duly handicapped. How to let go of the safety-net of psychiatry–that which is deemed irrefutable, scientific and biologically bound–and still survive was their question.

Using ideas from the sociology of the professions/knowledge, Ophir argues that analysts engaged in jurisdictional turf wars that the treatment of psychosis brought to the fore. In a profession largely populated by psychiatrists, during a time when psychosis came to be largely seen as a brain disorder rather than a defense or a remnant of pre-oedipal disturbance, analysts had to decide which side they were on. Analytic clinicians, attempting to stay relevant, began to employ the language of psychiatry, supporting what Ophir calls “the neosomatic revolution” only to find that by doing so, they had thrown out the (psychotic) baby with the bathwater.

Discursive shifts, be it in politics or a profession, have deep impacts–(when we hear analysts using the language of brain as opposed to mind we are in the presence of the data produced by that impact) and we see proof of this today: very, very few analysts treat psychosis.

As in most every divorce that involves children, custody is not usually distributed evenly. Ophir tells the story of how analysts handed over their psychotic patients ...

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Jill Gentile, “Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire” (Karnac Books, 2016) Oct 21, 2016

In Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire (Karnac Books, 2016), Psychoanalyst Jill Gentile explores the intersection between Freuds fundamental rule of free association and freedom of speech in a democracy, two subjects with obvious connections; however, as Gentile points out, surprisingly few writers have attempted to linked the two. In this interview, which spans the history of psychoanalysis and the U.S. Constitution, Gentile describes how both the psychological discipline and the political system aim at common goals, and that both psychoanalysis and democracy situate freedom in a particular space, a space governed by what Gentile calls a feminine law.

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Gail Hornstein, “To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann” (Other Books, 2005) Oct 13, 2016

The life of the German-born, pioneering American psychoanalyst, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, is intriguing enough in itself, but in the biography, To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (Other Books, 2005), we learn that Fromm-Reichmann played an integral role in mid-century psychoanalysis. In this interview, with the author, psychologist, and historian, Gail Hornstein, we trace not only Fromm Reichmann’s many accomplishments, but also the history of Chestnut Lodge where she worked for many years, her relationships with Erich Fromm and Harold Searles, as well as the cultural impact of the book written by her patient Joanne Greenberg, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden. To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World is essential reading for anyone interested not only in the history of American psychoanalysis, but also psychoanalysis in general.

You can find Chris Bandini on Twitter @cebandini.

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Jonathan Garb, “Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015) Aug 22, 2016

In Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Jonathan Garb, the Gershom Scholem Professor in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explores the rich psychological tradition in modern Kabbalah and modern mysticism. Tracing Kabbalistic writing from sixteenth-century Safed to contemporary New York, he shows how both psychoanalysis and modern Kabbalah have been expressions of the process of modernization.

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Mark Borg, et. al. “Irrelationship: How We Use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy” (Central Recovery Press, 2015) Jul 16, 2016

Why do relationship partners so often feel isolated and unsatisfied despite all their efforts to show love and caring to one another? And how do they break out of the self-defeating cycles that get them there? In their new book, Irrelationship: How We Use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy (Central Recovery Press, 2015), Mark Borg, Grant Brenner, and Daniel Berry address these daunting questions. They explain how parental disappointments during childhood can set one up for a life of compulsive caregiving at the expense of true human connection, which they call “irrelationship.” They address a growing epidemic by which, in later adulthood, partners use those well-honed caregiving skills to hide from one another rather than become closer. Drawing from cutting-edge neuroscience, psychoanalytic theory, and clinical experience, the authors address how these habitual patterns take shape in the brain and in the soul, and how partners can find their way out of them. The book is full of relatable anecdotes and practical suggestions that any reader who has ever struggled with love and intimacy will find illuminating and helpful.

I spoke with two of the authors, Mark Borg and Grant Brenner, about how they arrived at the idea of “irrelationship” and how their skill-based approach has improved the lives of their patients and readers. I hope you enjoy the interview.

Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in LGBTQ issues, eating andbody image problems, and working with cultural minorities.

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Sheldon Itzkowitz and Elizabeth Howell, eds “The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis: Understanding and Working with Trauma” (Routledge, 2016) Jun 30, 2016

The rediscovery of trauma in the analytic field coupled with the the development of the concept of dissociation is the focus of a new book edited by two preeminent clinicians, Sheldon Itzkowitz and Elizabeth Howell— The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis: Understanding and Working with Trauma (Routledge, 2016). In this interview, we discuss how this edited book was undertaken and current and historic views of the role of trauma. The authors contend that the concept of trauma itself has been dissociated in the profession, essentially since the disavowal by Freud of infant sexuality. It is only since the relational turn in psychoanalysis that trauma has once again moved to the forefront of clinical work. Here we discuss some of the historic implications as well as several of the twenty two authors’ chapters in this well edited and concise book.

Christopher Bandini, LCSW, is in private practice in New York City. Twitter: @cebandini.

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Susan Kavaler-Adler, “The Compulsion to Create: Women Writers and Their Demon Lovers” (ORI Academic, 2013) Jun 27, 2016

Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist in private practice and founder of The Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis where she is a training analyst, is a prolific writer and thinker celebrated for integrationist approach to Object Relations thinking. The Compulsion to Create: Women Writers and their Demon Lovers, originally published by Routledge in 1993 and recently re-published by ORI Academic Press in 2013, is Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s first of five published book a labor of her love for the creative process which earned her an honorary Doctorate of Literature from Ignatius University. Dr. Kavaler-Adler calls into question the myth that one must be crazy to be creative and raises concern about the implication that therapeutic intervention is a deterrent to creative growth.

For Dr. Kavaler-Adler, the therapeutic process is an inherently creative process. Like the artists encounter with her work, the subject’s encounter with the couch involves an engagement with the unconscious. A comprehensive analysis of Object Relations theory organizes this study around the the Demon Lover theme which appears in both literature and psychoanalysis. Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s own definition emerges from her theory that mourning is an important developmental process, one which, when stunted due to pre-oedipal arrest, leads to what she calls The Compulsion to Create a state of psychological and creative compulsion which hinders psychic and creative growth. Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s The Compulsion to Create is a psycho-biographical examination of esteemed women writers, among them, Anais Nin, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Edith Sitwell, and most comprehensively, the famed Bronte sisters.

Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s unique psycho-biographical approach considers not just the relationship between one work and another, but also the relationships between the biographical context which each work proceeds from as it is created, as well as the biographical context it intervenes in when published. In this way, Dr. Kavaler-Adler explicitly connects the manifestation of the writers object relations in her life as well as in her art. Her exquisitely researched book clearly insights the meaningful and inherent engagement between the woman writers life and art at the level of the unconscious. She poetically explains an author’s work is a reflection of the authors internal world just as dreams are. Above all, Dr. Kavaler-Adler encourages a positive engagement between the creative and therapeutic process, arguing that profound creative developments can proceed from effective therapeutic interventions which revive the subject from a state of psychic arrest and the creative collapse which results from it.

Dr. Susan Kavaler’s list of publications including her most comprehensive contribution to Object Relations thinking The Klein-Winnicot Dialectic (Karnac 2014) can be found on her website where opportunities to study the Object Relations approach from a clinical standpoint and seek treatment in individual and group settings can also be found, including a group for writers which has been held monthly for 21 years. She has previously been interviewed on New Books in Psychoanalysis by Claire-Madeline Culkin about her later publication The Anatomy of Regret (Karnac 2013).

Claire-Madeline Culkin is an analytically minded author. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College and holds a BA in Psychology from Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts. If you’re an author interested in joining the discussion,...

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Gabriel Mendes, “Under the Strain of Color: Harlem’s Lafargue Clinic and the Promise of an Antiracist Psychiatry” (Cornell University Press, 2015) Jun 15, 2016

In his 1948 essay, “Harlem is Nowhere,” Ralph Ellison decried the psychological disparity between formal equality and discrimination faced by Blacks after the Great Migration as leaving “even the most balanced Negro open to anxiety.” In Under the Strain of Color: Harlem’s Lafargue Clinic and the Promise of an Antiracist Psychiatry (Cornell University Press, 2015), Gabriel Mendes undertakes an engaging study of race and mental health in the 20th century through the lens of an overlooked Harlem clinic.

While providing the first in-depth history of the Lafargue Clinic (1946-58), the book focuses on the figures who came together in a seemingly unlikely union to found it: Richard Wright, the prominent author; Fredric Wertham, a German Jewish emigre psychiatrist now known for his advocacy for censorship of comic books; and The Reverend Shelton Hale Bishop, an important Harlem pastor. Wright’s literary prowess, work for the Communist party, and brush with Chicago School sociology met with Wertham’s socially-conscious and uncompromising brand of psychoanalysis to challenge mainstream psychiatric theory and its discriminatory practices in the Jim Crow North. Those who could afford it were charged 25 cents for sessions in the basement of St. Philip’s Episcopal church in Harlem, and 50 cents for court testimonials. A thoroughgoing grassroots effort, ignored by philanthropists and state funding, the Lafargue Clinic throws mid-20th Century mental health and race relations into relief, and is sure to stir interest in the untold stories of projects like it.

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Galit Atlas, “The Enigma of Desire: Sex, Longing, and Belonging in Psychoanalysis” (Routledge, 2015) Jun 02, 2016

This interview is really a conversation between two friends, peers, and colleagues–two women who were pleased to find each other in the psychoanalytic world who keep track of each others’ development. I confess this as a form of journalistic disclosure, but, also, because of our connection, this interview traverses much more than the book she recently published, The Enigma of Desire: Sex, Longing, and Belonging in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2015).

I ask Galit Atlas a slew of questions about key concepts in the book: what is she after using terms such as “enigmatic,” “pragmatic,” and “breaks in unity” among them. We wander through the Kristevan garden of bodily fluids and abjection and ponder Kristeva’s appeal to Persian analysts like herself and Gohar Homanyapour (interviewed on NBIP by Anna Fishzon). We think about essentialism and motherhood and try to explore why sexuality takes precedence over desire in America.

Her book title shares itself with one of Salvador Dali’s most famous paintings, The Enigma of Desire, or My Mother, My Mother, My Mother, from 1929. Discoursing upon his creation, also in an interview, Dali had this to say: “Sometimes I spit with pleasure on my mother’s portrait, since one can perfectly well love one’s mother and still dream that one spits upon her . . . now go and try to make people understand that.” Atlas’ book takes up Dali’s demand for work (as well as Andre Green’s plea for the re-establishment of sexuality as central to psychoanalysis), emphasizing sexuality and its many emanations in the clinic as speaking a language of its own. A clinically rich book, Atlas’ work schools its readers in a new way of listening for that which is inchoate and ineffable and worth hearing. Her thinking takes us on a trip beyond the mother-infant dyad, stopping to drink at the house of Laplanche with a little Ruth Stein only to deposit us closer to the drives, opening the door to the land of the autoerotic.

Tracy D. Morgan is the founding editor and host of NBIP, a psychoanalyst in practice in NYC trained also as an historian, she writes about many things.

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Katie Gentile, ed., “The Business of Being Made” (Routledge, 2015) May 28, 2016

In this interview, Dr. Katie Gentile discusses the research, writing and creative thinking about compulsory parenthood and Assisted Reproductive Technologies (or ARTs) that animate the essays appearing in The Business of Being Made: The Temporalities of Reproductive Technologies in Psychoanalysis and Culture (Routledge, 2015). It is striking that while personhood amendments proliferate and sovereignty over the reproductive body shifts frighteningly more and more to the State, a global, bio-medical industrial complex has arisen comprising ARTs, surrogate pregnancy, egg/sperm donation and the like. Gentile points out the rise of the post-9/11 fetishization of the fetus a receptacle for all our vulnerabilities which must be protected at all costs in the face of the hyper-object: the threat of global catastrophe looming large. ARTs and its associated industries manufacture hope and optimism in conceiving babies at any cost (for those of privilege) while serving to further elevate, protect and fetishize the fetus. It’s a space of repro-futurity in which life is constructed around achieving reproductive milestones. ARTs have become another neoliberal trope to imagine life without limits as they have been subsumed into ordinary medicine for all women. With ARTs there is often no space to acknowledge loss, shame, uncertainty and the sexual re-traumatization that often occur during the process. On the plus side, ARTs offer the promise and opportunity of biological parenthood to marginalized people (for example, trans men) resulting in diverse family configurations. Gentile asks can other spaces be nurtured so that babies are not the main focus of generativity, especially for women? How can we better theorize childfree lives of creativity that are not seen as displaced parenting but generativity for its own pleasure?

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Jon Sletvold, “The Embodied Analyst: From Freud and Reich to Relationality” (Routledge, 2016) May 04, 2016

Bodies, both the patient’s and the analyst, has been a neglected area of investigation in psychoanalysis for many years, despite it’s presence in Freud’s early theories and clinical work.

In this interview with the Gradiva award winning author Jon Sletvold, we discuss his recent book The Embodied Analyst: From Freud and Reich to Relationality (Routledge, 2016). In a lively discussion, Dr. Svetvold describes not only his motivation for writing this book, but the history of the body in psychoanalysis, especially the contributions of the often maligned psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich. Drawing from his own experience as a Norwegian psychoanalyst, Dr. Sletvold elaborates on embodied subjectivity and intersubjectivity, and how the training and supervision of psychoanalysts might “incorporate” some of these concepts.

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Bland and Strawn, “Christianity and Psychoanalysis: A New Conversation” (IntraVarsity Press, 2014) Apr 12, 2016

Despite remaining neutral on his personal religious beliefs, Freud’s commitment to empiricism and his determination in relegating psychoanalysis to a scientifically valid position has had a lasting impact. In some sense, its created a taboo against theological considerations. This taboo, Earl Bland and Brad Strawn, the editors of Christianity and Psychoanalysis: A New Conversation (IntraVarsity Press, 2014) argue, has been to the detriment of psychoanalysis as a clinical form of treatment and a philosophical system of meaning. Like religion, psychoanalysis attempts to ask what it means to live in the face of death. Psychoanalysis, in its traditions as vast and nuanced as those within the Christian faith, like religion, has moral imperatives about how subjectivity ought to be structured.

Bland and Strawn observe that the culture is ripe for a new conversation, in that the turn toward rationalitywithin Christianity can be understood as a philosophical parallel to the turn in psychoanalytic theory toward understanding the human subject as being in relationship. To initiate this conversation, they have gathered a group of practitioners and people of faith from across the spectrum, to engage in this exchange: one that breaks the taboo that has prevented these two domains of knowledge from sharing the same conversational space.

Speaking from perspectives across both disciplines, this book features authors ranging from contemporary Freudian psychoanalysis to Attachment-Based psychoanalytic therapy on the psychoanalytic spectrum and from traditional Catholicism to faiths rooted in the Charismatic tradition across the Christian spectrum. In each chapter, the authors mutually invoke a theoretical consideration together with a clinical demonstration. Their voices are informed, critical, and personal in equal measure. Together with the editors, they candidly and humbly demonstrate not just the value of, but also the necessity of, acknowledging the dialogical influence of religious beliefs in the clinical setting, both on the side of the patient, as someone who may organize his or her subjectivity in relationship to faith, as well as on the side of the clinician, whose religious beliefs may consciously or unconsciously mediate the treatment.

Claire-Madeline’s interests lie at the intersection of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and Catholic theology, which are often at the fore of her discussions with the authors she is privileged to interview for the New Books Network. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College and holds a BA in Psychology from Eugene Lang College, The New School for liberal arts.

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Jean-Michel Rabate, “The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis” (Cambridge UP, 2014) Mar 18, 2016

Calling into question common assumptions regarding the supposedly antagonist relationship between literary criticism and psychoanalytic reading, Jean-Michel Rabatepaints a picture of reconciliation rather than rift. Drawing from a vast store of cultural incident–from Sophie Calle’s modern art to the novels of Henry James–The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis (Cambridge University Press, 2014) argues that psychoanalysis and active literary reading are both implicated in the same process, one which engages the unconscious and makes one an “ambassador” thereto.

In our interview, Rabate holds court on various issues, including the similarities between Jacques Lacan and Carl Jung, as well as the status of James Joyce as sinthome of literature. Moving beyond the textual, he also captivatingly considers not only the relationship between trauma and perversion but also the ways in which Lacan and Derrida differed in their interpretation of the “public intellectual” role and its responsibilities.

A startling intellectual himself, Rabate illuminates and enthralls in his conversation as much as in his writing.

Michael Mungiello is interested in the implications psychoanalysis has on broader cultural studies, ranging from literature to politics to television and film. He lives in Washington, DC and is originally from New Jersey.

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Colette Soler, “Lacanian Affects: The Function of Affect in Lacan’s Work”, trans. Bruce Fink (Routledge, 2016) Mar 14, 2016

Affect is a weighty and consequential problem in psychoanalysis. People enter treatment hoping for relief from symptoms and their attendant unbearable affects. While various theorists and schools offer differing approaches to “feeling states,” emotions, and affects, Lacan, despite devoting an entire seminar to anxiety, often is charged with completely ignoring affect. This misperception stems in part from a caricatured understanding of Lacanian technique – a suspicion that it consists mainly of punning and interminable wordplay. And there is another, more sound reason for the accusation: the tendency of relational, interpersonal, and Kleinian models to locate truth in affects and regard emotions as inherently revelatory – as the most direct communications by and about the subject. By contrast, the question, “How did that make you feel?” is heard infrequently in the Lacanian clinic. Following Freud, Lacan believed that affects are effects. He shared Freud’s skepticism toward manifest emotional states, doubting not their importance but rather their transparency. The royal road to the unconscious is the deciphering of dreams and not the affects they produce. Nevertheless, Lacan’s views on affect increasingly diverged from those of Freud, offering much that was new.

Colette Soler’s pioneering Lacanian Affects: The Function of Affect in Lacan’s Work, translated by Bruce Fink (Routledge, 2016) is the first book to examine Lacan’s theory of affect and its clinical significance. While Lacan focused more on the structural causes of affect in his earlier theoretical elaborations, an initial reversal came in his seminar Anxiety (1962-63), where he deemed anxiety the only affect that “does not lie” because it refers to and partakes of the real rather than the signifier. Another reversal, Soler explains, culminated in Encore (1972-73), where Lacan declared that certain “enigmatic affects,” though puzzling to the subject, are carriers of knowledge residing in the real unconscious – a knowledge that is not on the side of meaning but of jouissance. Soler’s book is wide-ranging, covering affects such as shame and sadness, as well as many others we did not have time to discuss in our interview: hatred, ignorance, the pain of existence, mourning, “joyful knowledge,” boredom, moroseness, anger, and enthusiasm. Perhaps most fascinating is Soler’s chapter on Lacan’s enigmatic affects: anxiety (translated in the book as “anguish”), love, and the satisfaction derived from the end of an analysis.

Annie Muir kindly translated during the interview.

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George Makari, “Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind” (Norton, 2014) Jan 20, 2016

In his new book Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind (Norton, 2014), the psychoanalyst and innovative historian, George Makari speaks to us about the dramatic history of the invention of the concept of the mind. Beginning at the origins of modernity, Makari takes the reader on a wild ride across the European continent in a search for answers about the nature of human inner life.

Hardly a sedate academic debate, the history of the mind is a history soaked in blood. Heretical ideas challenged religious and political authority, toppled governments and fomented revolution. In the shift from an ethereal, God-given soul to a material, thinking mind, humanity found itself freed from the authoritarian rule of the church and the need for a monarch; however, with this newfound freedom to reason and self-govern, man needed to contend with the limits of reason, with unbridled passions, and with madness.

Makari has written a history of ideas with powerful implications for the field of psychoanalysis. First, there was the secularization of the soul. Now we are witnessing the supplanting of the mind by neuroscience, biology, and brain. This raises questions about the role psychoanalysis can play in keeping a focus on the mind.

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Abram de Swaan, “The Killing Compartments: The Mentality of Mass Murder” (Yale UP, 2015) Jan 11, 2016

For a couple of decades, scholars have moved toward a broad consensus that context, rather than ideology, is most important in pushing ordinary men and women to participate in mass murder. The “situationist paradigm,” as Abram de Swaan labels this, concludes from studies by psychologists, sociologists, historians and others, that individuals are malleable, easily influenced by their surroundings, easily enough that they can be moved to do things that, in other contexts, would be easily recognizable as morally bankrupt.

de Swaan rejects this conclusion. He asserts instead that most people would not participate in mass murder without a much deeper set of framing events and incentives. His book The Killing Compartments: The Mentality of Mass Murder (Yale University Press, 2015) lays out an alternate theory for the participation of both regimes and individuals in cases of mass murder. de Swaan brings his decades of experience in sociology to bear in crafting a thoughtful, well articulated and well-constructed argument. In particular, he argues that we should place more weight on the life-histories of perpetrators than has been common in recent discussions.

As de Swaan points out early in the book, what is modern about mass violence is not that it happens, but that we are embarrassed about it. This reminds us of the importance of the debate he has so vigorously engaged.

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Christopher Bollas, “When the Sun Bursts: The Enigma of Schizophrenia” (Yale University Press, 2015) Dec 21, 2015

In his second visit with New Books in Psychoanalysis, Christopher Bollas elucidates his thinking about schizophrenia. But he also does more than that; because his beginnings as a clinician are intimately intertwined with the treatment of psychosis, the ways in which this early exposure colors all of his clinical thinking becomes apparent.

Indeed, in psychoanalysis we could say that there are two kinds of clinicians–those who treat psychosis and those who don’t. Bollas is clearly in the former camp. One wonders, given the centrality of psychosis in his theoretical work, if he would have been drawn to analytic work had he not started with the most primitive of human experiences?

We meet him as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, studying history, working at a program for autistic and psychotic children presumably to pay the bills. We follow him to SUNY-Buffalo where, while pursuing his PhD in literature, he encounters psychotic students in a class he is teaching, walks across the campus to the clinic, asks if he might work there as a clinician and is brought on staff. (Those were the days…)

It is worth noting that Bollas, one of the most renown thinkers in psychoanalysis, began as a lay practitioner (he has an MSW which I presume he acquired so as to practice in this country). His longing for a clinical life, pursued while completing his studies in the humanities, seems to have been piqued by his encounters with psychosis.

While Bollas is one of the profession’s strongest critics of the medicalization of psychosis, he always works with a team that includes an MD, a social worker and others when treating schizophrenia. His role on the team is to help the person suffering from psychosis to talk and also, crucially, to historicize. (Interestingly, the book includes a chapter that shows him at work as an American historian.)

He reminds us that seeing psychosis as “other” places those who begin to have nascent-to-florid psychotic experiences at ever greater risk of being lost to us and to themselves, forever.

He minces no words as he argues on behalf of the psychotic persons need for speech. “We all know the wisdom of talking. In trouble, we turn to another. Being listened to inevitably generates new perspective, and the help we get lies not only in what is said but in that human connection intrinsic to the therapeutic process of talking that promotes unconscious thinking.” Indeed the barrage of medications on offer alongside treatment modalities that give short shrift to speech, run the risk of increasing isolation and blurring the mind which in turn increases psychosis. As is his wont, Bollas turns common treatment logic on its head: “the loss of un-selfconscious participation in the everyday …constitutes the gravest tragedy for the adult schizophrenic.” There is a way back, he argues, but, and here I riff on his thinking, only if the culture comes to understand anew what it means to be human.

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Vamik D. Volkan, “A Nazi Legacy: Depositing, Transgenerational Transmission, Dissociation, and Remembering Through Action” (Karnac, 2015) Dec 15, 2015

Vamik D. Volkan, a native of Cyprus, was touched by ethnic/political violence at a very personal level when he was still in medical school: a very close friend was shot by terrorists during the Cypriat war. “I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it at the time, I was far from home.” Once he completed medical school and his psychoanalytic training, he noticed that he had become preoccupied with theoretical questions of mourning, and he realized he was motivated by his loss to address issues of ethnic violence and peace-making from a psychoanalytic angle. How are generations of families affected by historical trauma and loss? How does political violence and trauma become a chosen or disavowed element of identity across generations? With A Nazi Legacy: Depositing, Transgenerational Transmission, Dissociation, and Remembering Through Action (Karnac 2015), Volkan recounts a fascinating, riveting, theoretically powerful case history he supervises, of the grandson of a high level Nazi perpetrator, instrumental in developing the forced euthanasia of people with disabilities. The grandfather’s program was called “T4”, and he was responsible for introducing the technique of killing groups of people with gas, which went on to be used on the large scale in the camps. He was later killed on the Eastern Front. When the grandson, the subject of the case, Victor, is born, his parents are deeply preoccupied with the possibility that Victor may have a disability. Victor is haunted by the memory of a tonsillectomy at three years old, of his struggling and resisting being “gassed” by the pediatrician. As an adult, he presents for therapy with the problem that he has episodes at night of waking in a dissociative state in his room and trying to escape through the window. A complication for the treatment is that Victor’s future analyst is the daughter of a Nazi soldier…

A Nazi Legacy is challenging, moving, but also useful as a presentation of clinical technique. Volkan strongly advocates for psychoanalysts to be more aware of the effects of social and political violence on the internal world of their patients, but also to be aware of how these events affect analysts themselves, and play out in enactments of disavowal. As Victor begins to work through his family history and the truth of his grandfather’s atrocities, he has a pivotal reaction to seeing the film “Twelve Years a Slave”: “he recalled the film dealing with racism and thought he might be like white people in the United States.”

Vamik D. Volkan is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, the Senior Erik Erikson Scholar at the Erikson Institute of Education and Research of the Austen Riggs Center, and an Emeritus Training and Supervising Analyst at the Washington DC Psychoanalytic Institute. Dr. Volkan is also president of the International Dialogue Initiative (IDI), a nonprofit organization that brings together unofficial representatives from various parts of the world, such as Germany, Iran, Israel, Russia, Turkey, UK, U.S.A, and the West Bank to examine world affairs from a psychopolitical angle. The IDI develops a common language between psychoanalysts and those who are diplomats, politicians or from other disciplines. Dr. Volkan is a 2015 Winner of the prestigious Sigourney Award, and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times.

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Steven J. Ellman, “When Theories Touch: A Historical and Theoretical Integration of Psychoanalytic Thought” (Karnac, 2010) Dec 09, 2015

There are theorists who seem to strive for integration and those who insist on fundamental differences, incompatibilities, and unbridgeable gulfs. Some write from an interdisciplinary position, exulting in hybridity and increased potentiality, while others, no less passionately, police disciplinary boundaries, urging seriousness and rigor. The argument to integrate is rooted in the assumption that a theory only can be enriched through the incorporation of varying perspectives; a multiple factor model is inherently more flexible and practicable. Proponents of disciplinary and theoretical purity counter that true integration is impossible: synthetic efforts often fall short, resulting in pastiche, lists of superficial similarities, or vitiated “middle positions.”Steven J. Ellman, in When Theories Touch: A Historical and Theoretical Integration of Psychoanalytic Thought (Karnac, 2010) unapologetically declares his allegiance to the first camp. As Ellman explains in his preface, the blending of various theoretical models in the service of expanding and deepening clinical practice has long been his preoccupation, one might even say, his ethical stance.

When Theories Touch is divided into three loosely delimited sections (“Freud Chapters,” “Major Post-Freudian Theorists,” and “Contemporary Issues in Psychoanalysis”) and eighteen chapters featuring readings of an array of psychoanalytic giants, including Anna Freud, Heinz Hartmann, Melanie Klein, W. Ronald D. Fairbairn, D. W. Winnicott, Harry Stack Sullivan, Margaret Mahler, Heinz Kohut, Otto Kernberg, Wilfred Bion, and Stephen Mitchell. Most of the integrative labor is contained in the commentary sections of each chapter, as well as the concluding chapter, modestly titled, “A Tentative Developmental Model.”

In many ways, Ellman is building on the work spurred by the baby observers of the 1980s and 1990s. Those decades not only witnessed the challenge to classical technique by relational theorists but also epistemic convergences founded on object relations theory and the studied infant-caregiver dyad. Insights from Klein, Kohut, Bion, and Winnicott were framed and woven together by shared assumptions about the structuring influence of early mother-infant interactions. Ellman echoes and enlarges these prior efforts. He includes clinical material, indexing implications for technique. He also introduces the relational viewpoint of Mitchell while maintaining a place for drives (or what he prefers to call “endogenous stimulation”), both in his developmental model and his practice. With surprising ease Ellman is able to stake out a theoretical position that complicates (or, arguably, obviates!) age-old psychoanalytic debates about object-seeking vs. pleasure-seeking infants, the centrality of the Oedipus complex, the timing and necessity of transference interpretation, and a host of metapsychological and clinical questions.

The relevance and value of Ellman’s book, I believe, rests less in its integration (which is partial by the author’s own measure) than in its brave and convincing advocacy of the merging of causes that previously have done violence to one another. During our interview and in the book, Ellman approaches each body of theory with rare openness and curiosity. He enables theorists as discordant as Stephen Mitchell and Charles Brenner to enter into productive conversation, enhancing the contributions of both through new and unexpected syntheses.

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Eli Zaretsky, “Political Freud: A History” (Columbia UP, 2015) Dec 02, 2015

Back in the early 70s, Eli Zaretsky wrote for a socialist newspaper and was engaged to review a recently released book, Psychoanalysis and Feminism by Juliet Mitchell. First, he decided, he’d better read some Freud. This started a life-long engagement with psychoanalysis and leftist politics, and his new book Political Freud: A History (Columbia University Press, 2015) conveys the richness of his decades of reading Freud. Following his 2004 Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis, Zaretsky’s latest book, some would call it a companion, is comprised of five essays analyzing the complexity of the mutual influencing of capitalism, social/political history, and psychoanalysis, with particular attention to how and whether people conceive of their own interiority as political. (Particularly timely is chapter two: “Beyond the Blues: the Racial Unconscious and Collective Memory” which explores African American intellectual engagement with psychoanalysis as a tool for understanding oppression.) “Whereas introspection did once define an epoch of social and cultural history– the Freudian epoch– there were historical reasons for this, and it was bound to pass” says Zaretsky. But Political Freud is also a compelling argument for how badly we still need a conception of the self–or ego– with a critical and non-normalizing edge.

Eli Zaretsky is a professor of history at The New School, writes and teaches about twentieth-century cultural history, the theory and history of capitalism (especially its social and cultural dimensions), and the history of the family. He is also the author of Why America Needs a Left, Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis and Capitalism, the Family and Personal Life.

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Andrea Celenza, “Erotic Revelations: Clinical Applications and Perverse Scenarios” (Routledge, 2014) Nov 10, 2015

[NB:Please be forewarned, there is some brief audio difficulty at the beginning of the interview. It does clear up quickly, so please do listen through.] We are drawn to what is hidden. We are excited by what is mysterious whether we find it beautiful or repellant. Erotic experience is all about this urge. Sexuality, both in its defensive function and as an intrinsic part of being human, defines the ways in which we engage in the psychoanalytic situation. However, it can be very difficult – even taboo – for analysts to admit having erotic feelings towards a patient, and it can be equally thorny handling erotic transference when it arises in a treatment. In Erotic Revelations: Clinical Applications and Perverse Scenarios (Routledge, 2014), Andrea Celenza discusses the importance of reclaiming sexuality as one of the many realms that are of central concern to our patients as she simultaneously observes the pervasive “desexualization” of the psychoanalytic field. She asserts that erotic transference and countertransference (of various manifestations) should be explored in every thorough analysis and she means to bring sex squarely back into psychoanalytic theorizing.

Celenza offers careful consideration of the use and perils of embodied erotic countertransference as well as dilemmas surrounding self-disclosure, guilty pleasure and the “slippery slope” towards sexual boundary transgression (the subject of her earlier writing.) Celenza and I discuss writing about patients, mutuality, asymmetry, embodiment, re-eroticization, multiplicity and contradictory gender considerations proposing ways in which the binary (e.g., “feminine” and “masculine”) poses constraints that may be transcended. Finally, Celenza reclaims the term “perversion” as a mode of relating vs. a descriptor of behavior thereby restoring its usefulness in the psychoanalytic lexicon. Among other points, she posits that perverse scenarios are attempts to construct a one-person fantasy/universe thereby defending against dangerous subjectivities (either within one’s self or in the other.)

Dr. Andrea Celenza, is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, Faculty at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis and an Assistant Clinical Professor at Harvard Medical School. She is private practice in Lexington, Massachusetts and is a proud and avid soccer player.

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Darian Leader, “Strictly Bipolar” (Penguin, 2013) Nov 03, 2015

To those unfamiliar with psychodiagnostics, Bipolar 3.5 might sound like the latest Apple software. To psychoanalyst Darian Leader it is indicative of the relatively recent proliferation and growing elasticity of bipolar disorders. For about the last twenty years, argues Leader, the bipolar spectrum has been tailored to a pharmaceutical industry eager to shift attention away from ineffective antidepressants and toward newly developed mood stabilizers. A household word since the mid-1990s, “bipolar” is now widely considered to be biological and hereditary. Its loosened parameters have saddled large swaths of the population with a chronic illness requiring life-long medication.

Strictly Bipolar (Penguin, 2013) is a trenchant case for the reexamination of the “bipolar revolution” and for a return to the older diagnosis of manic depression. Leader points out that while bipolarity is at the center of modern capitalist subjectivity – the principal feature of twenty-first-century worklife, which encourages and rewards herculean productivity and exuberant all-nighters — manic depression is a structural, much narrower and less frequent problem. The highs and lows of manic depression are not merely behavioral or ominously genetic but, rather, rooted in an individual’s early history: relationships with primary caregivers, fantasies regarding one’s symbolic place within the family. Manic depression also has common motifs that reflect its structural basis and identifications. Mania announces itself, for example, in fits of housecleaning, shopping sprees, and grand gestures of altruism. Manic episodes often begin with a steady stream of words – extravagant metaphors and brilliant rhetorical leaps — a levity in the symbolic, as Leader puts it. These great themes of mania are traced in Strictly Bipolar to personal stories of guilt, responsibility, and debt; distant or inconsistent parents and grandparents who expected too much or overwhelmingly little and elicited (split off) aggression and hate. We learn that manic-depressives struggle with the overproximity of the Other, attempting to keep the Other separate and safe from all that is bad, from murderous rage, from oneself.

Strictly Bipolar offers compelling clinical material and vivid biographical descriptions of the “signature motifs” of manic-depression. In reading the book, I could see how one might be tempted to lean too heavily on surface behaviors and mood states in thinking and diagnosing manic depression. Yet, as Leader points out, manic-depressives have a troubled relationship with time and find it difficult to integrate their own histories. It therefore behooves therapists not to join them in this, redoubling the problem. In the interview, Leader characterizes manic depression and other psychoses without the usual prognostic pessimism – not as problems of subjectivization resulting in social exclusion, medication, or institutional scrutiny but as “ways of being in the world.”

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Hilary Neroni, “The Subject of Torture: Psychoanalysis and Biopolitics in Television and Film” (Columbia UP, 2015) Oct 27, 2015

Did you notice that after 9/11, the depiction of torture on prime-time television went up nearly seven hundred percent? Hilary Neroni did. She had just finished a book on the changing relationship between female characters and violence in narrative cinema, and was attuned to function of violence in film and television. This was around the time the Abu Ghraib torture photos were leaked to the public. Over the next 10 years, torture porn appeared in the Saw and Hostel films, and it seemed that torture quickly became a routine element of thriller plots in movies and TV, such as the series 24. In The Subject of Torture: Psychoanalysis and Biopolitics in Television and Film (Columbia University Press, 2015), Neroni makes a compelling case that, prior to 9/11, the stage had already been set for the dehumanizing fantasy of torture to appear in mass culture – via biopolitics. With this book, Neroni takes on the task of defining and understanding torture through a psychoanalytic lens, using films and television as case studies. The book is both compelling and readable, and argues that the fantasy and depiction of torture play a role as an ideology in national politics and policy, and that it’s all more complicated than it seems–once you stop averting your eyes.

Hilary Neroni teaches in the Film and Television Studies Program at the University of Vermont and is also the author of The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema. Her areas of interest include representations of gender and race in contemporary American film, violence in film, women directors, documentary film/video, feminist theory, psychoanalysis, and Marxism. She has published essays on women directors (in particular Jane Campion and Claire Denis) and on issues surrounding gender and violence in the cinema.

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Theodore J. Jacobs, “The Possible Profession: The Analytic Process of Change” (Routledge, 2013) Oct 20, 2015

In this interview Dr. Theodore Jacobs discusses his book The Possible Profession: The Analytic Process of Change (Routledge, 2013) . Dr. Jacobs is a pioneer in the use of countertransference in the analytic setting and is regarded as the originator of the term “enactment” to describe the actions and emotions that occur within both the patient and analyst during treatment.

In this interview we discuss how psychoanalytic technique has evolved and how Jacobs’ classical orientation has changed over his career. Dr. Jacobs also shared his views on self disclosure, current practice and the integration of one and two person psychologies. The interview concludes with Dr. Jacob’s thoughts on the current state of the profession, some of his favorite theorists, institute training, and the internecine battles that have occurred in psychoanalysis over the years.

Theodore J. Jacobs, M.D., is a child and adolescent psychoanalyst as well as an adult analyst in private practice. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry (Emeritus) at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a Training and Supervising Analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and Institute for Psychoanalytic Education. Dr. Jacobs is also a past president of The Association for Child Psychoanalysis.

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Gillian Isaacs Russell, “Screen Relations: The Limits of Computer-Mediated Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy” (Karnac, 2015) Oct 13, 2015

At New Books in Psychoanalysis, interviews are conducted using Skype. As the program is audio rather than video based, it never occurred to me to use the camera on my computer to see on the screen the person I was speaking to. Rather, I kept my ear turned acutely towards the authors, hanging on their every word while privately perusing my list of questions. I have joked with many interviewees that for all I know they are in their pajamas or naked. Truth be told, I have had no interest in seeing the authors during the interview. There was and is something about having the experience that the listener has on hearing, rather than seeing, the interview that may play a role in creating a certain kind of intensity and intimacy. So it was not lost on me that for this particular interview with Gillian Isaacs Russell about a book that looks straightforwardly at the impact of technology on the therapeutic relationship, that we would not be making eye contact. Though we could, I requested that we not do so. And anyway, of course, if you have used it, eye contact is actually impossible on Skype. We can see each other but we cannot lock orbs.

Our interview, as you will hear, is full of the same kinds of problems that one might have when working with a patient over the ether. At one point there is a bizarre reverb and everything Isaacs Russell says comes out in triplicate. We did not lose the connection though this has happened to me on several occasions while playing my interlocutory part. And of course we both had our anxieties about the capacity of the technology to connect us and to keep us connected but do bear in mind that we are not analyst and patient. Our relationship is layered with much less meaning or significance than that of the analytic couple. If the technology disconnected us, we would not wonder if it was something that one of us said. No one would have hurt feelings. We could keep it impersonal.

In Screen Relations: The Limits of Computer-Mediated Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (Karnac, 2015), Isaacs Russell asks a key question of psychoanalysts: what might be lost in working this way? The interview explores reasons why analysts have jumped in to use Skype and explores what the implications might be of the loss of two bodies in a room together. Her thinking is clear and the ideas she pits forth I found haunting. The age old question of what makes a treatment psychoanalysis came to mind when reading this book as I wondered if you can’t smell the patient, if there is not the risk of touch that is not acted upon, if there is not the walk out the door when the session is over, is essential grist for the mill irreparably lost?

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Lene Auestad, “Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice” (Karnac, 2015) Sep 11, 2015

Lene Auestad, PhD, is Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Oslo, and affiliated with the Centre for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities, Oslo. She currently resides in the UK to pursuing long-standing interests in British psychoanalysis. Working at the interface of psychoanalytic thinking and ethics/political theory, her writing has focused on the themes of emotions, prejudice and minority rights.

Her books include:

Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice: A Psychoanalytical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Dynamics of Social Exclusion and Discrimination (Karnac, 2015)

Nationalism and the Body Politic. Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia (Karnac, 2014)

Psychoanalysis and Politics – Exclusion and the Politics of Representation (Karnac, 2012)

Action, Freedom, Humanity – Encounters with Hannah Arendt (in Norwegian)

Auestad founded and co-directs the interdisciplinary conference series “Psychoanalysis and Politics,” which aims to address how crucial contemporary political issues may be fruitfully analyzed through psychoanalytic theory and vice versa – how political phenomena may reflect back on psychoanalytic thinking.

In the book we’ll be discussing today, Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice: A Psychoanalytical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Dynamics of Social Exclusion and Discrimination (Karnac, 2015), Auestad brings together psychoanalytic theory, philosophy, and sociology to create a bold and lively study of prejudice and its causes and effects at personal and social levels. The scope of her work is thrilling, moving from a clear investigation of how the unconscious and primary process play out in the phenomena of racism and prejudice; to the ethical issues of hate speech; to an exciting mash-up of Adorno and Bion on the implications of the authoritarian personality. But, following the example of Hannah Arendt, Auestad does not rest in the realm of detached theory, rather, she draws lessons from experience and current news headlines, exploring abuses and prejudice related to treatment of asylum seekers and migrants. Auestad is rigorous and thorough intellectually, but also uncommonly willing to consider how everyone plays a role in the workings of prejudice– including philosophers and psychoanalysts. During the interview, we attempt both to consider the content of Auestad’s study, but also to tell the intellectual story of her efforts to work across disciplines in ways that hold great promise for using psychoanalytic theory to understand social space.

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Paul Verhaeghe, “What About Me?: The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society” (Scribe, 2014) Aug 18, 2015

Feeling exhausted, hopeless, and anxious? You might be suffering from symptoms of neoliberalism, according toPaul Verhaeghe. In What About Me?: The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society (Scribe Publications, 2014), he takes on “Enron society,” demonstrating how the core insights and principles of psychoanalysis can be brought to bear on social relations, history, and ideology. The last 50 years have witnessed a staggering proliferation of psychiatric disorders — a bloated Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM) that has both reflected and caused the over-diagnosis, disciplining, and medication of individuals afflicted with social rather than mental problems.

How can you not feel dejected and panic-stricken, asks Verhaeghe, when you live in a “meritocracy” that ensures some an obvious advantage? When you are evaluated incessantly and told you are not trying hard enough? When your work environment and community lack authority figures who take responsibility and set limits, leaving you to compete with coworkers and friends for scarce resources; and your creativity and passionate labor are immediately quantified and assessed for market value? You might even be relieved, argues Verhaeghe, to be diagnosed with an illness — and to incorporate it into your identity in order to excuse your inability to measure up. With so few options and so much pressure to fill the very limited number of slots designated for “winners,” having a neurologically determined ailment often feels better than being a failure. Using a psychiatric disorder as a shield from guilt is not malingering since the pervasiveness of neoliberal logic really has made you sick!

What About Me? traces notions of identity historically, providing an instructive overview of the shifts in Western thinking about the self. The story proceeds from Aristotelian immanence to Christian transcendence: the ancient Greek view that ethics are innate and need to be cultivated through self-care to the Christian belief that ethics are external and divine and inherently sinful humans can only aspire to goodness through spiritual communion. Since the latter half of the twentieth century, European and American neoliberal norms again have turned to the individual but without the classical period’s interest in citizenship or religious references to authority and God. Neoliberalism instead promotes a hyper-individualism supported by narrow positivism (quantitative measurement) and meritocracy (for the privileged classes) applied across a wide range of disciplines and professions, including academia and healthcare. Neoliberal success is equated with profit and human beings are understood “naturally” to be competitive, selfish, and unethical (hence the avalanche of evaluation and rules). But, following behavioral biologist Frans de Waal, Verhaeghe suggests that altruism as well as aggression inhere to higher primates and the cultural environment determines whether empathy or egotism predominates. The neoliberal obsession with the individual at the expense of the community ignores the fundamental human craving for love and hospitality – affects and behavior that are necessary for our wellbeing. What, then, do we do about all this? How do we alter dominant ideology and social organization? With the help of clinical experience and psychoanalytic ethics, Verhaeghe invites us to think through a solution.

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Alison Bancroft, “Fashion and Psychoanalysis: Styling the Self” (I. B. Tauris, 2012) Aug 07, 2015

Alison Bancroft has written a book with a refreshingly straightforward title: Fashion and Psychoanalysis: Styling the Self (I. B. Tauris, 2012). One immediately suspects that it reflects the author’s two most enduring obsessions and this suspicion is confirmed within the first quarter of our interview. Yet, as it turns out, both “psychoanalysis” and “fashion” demand qualification.By “fashion” Bancroft means adornment that assumes an innovative form – creativity applied to the surface of the body.The psychoanalysis she has in mind is Lacanian theory.If, then, you are expecting a condemnation of fashion as a frivolous pursuit or a Kleinian explanation for shifting hemlines and anorexic models, Bancroft will not satisfy. But if you are curious about what fashion as art and corporeal style might express about fundamental Freudian and Lacanian concepts like identification, femininity, and the unconscious, you will be delighted and edified.Readings of fashion and its sociocultural resonances teach us a great deal about the delimitation and radical questioning of the twentieth-century human subject. By bringing fashion into dialogue with the Lacanian notions of object a, the sinthome, desire, and jouissance, Bancroft unearths its disruptive potential: the capacity of fashion — like that of literature, painting and psychoanalysis — to give fleeting glimpses into unconscious truths and the feminine abyss of subjectivity.

The main body of Fashion and Psychoanalysis consists of four chapters that are discrete psychoanalytic explorations of fashion-as-protest, moving chronologically through Lacan’s teaching and spotlighting some of its key concepts.The first chapter considers the fashion photography of Nick Knight, whose presentations of fragmented, fractured bodies confound imagined ego boundaries and invite hysteric identifications from viewers.The second chapter discusses the work of the two most celebrated enfants terribles of 2000s fashion: John Galliano (formerly head designer at Dior) and Alexander McQueen.Bancroft analyzes a few of their best-known collections in order to demonstrate couture’s function as object a, driving desire and signaling feminine jouissance.Chapter 3 is about the courageous performance artist and fashion icon Leigh Bowery.Bancroft argues that his self-abjection and simultaneous embodiment of feminine and masculine positions prompted a painful pleasure in his audience – a transgressive jouissance brought out by masculinity’s violent destabilization.The final chapter investigates the similarities between Hussein Chalayan’s highly conceptual designs and Lacan’s sinthome.Is fashion, like the sinthome, a blurring of language and corporeality, the collapse of the Symbolic into feminine logic, the apex of aesthetic self-invention?Listen in and find out!

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Donnel B. Stern, “Relational Freedom: Emergent Properties of the Interpersonal Field” (Routledge, 2015) Aug 01, 2015

We are mostly familiar with the hermeneutics of suspicion. But what about a hermeneutics of curiosity? In his latest book Relational Freedom: Emergent Properties of the Interpersonal Field (Routledge, 2015), Dr. Donnel Stern discusses the ways in which a spirit of mutual curiosity between analyst and analysand can transform the field between them and alter their relationships to each other and themselves. Continuing the groundbreaking work of Unformulated Experience and the more recent Partners in Thought, Relational Freedom showcases Dr. Stern’s ability to arrange clinical case studies, a rich history of psychoanalytic thought, and contemporary theoretical critique in such a way as opens the reader’s mind to new conceptions of the priority of feeling in the interpersonal/relational field. Along the way, he paints a picture of enactment (the interpersonalisation of dissociation) and how the analytic dyad can handle enactments in a fashion that frees up the analyst and analysand to see their relationship in a new light.

Meditating on the influence of interpersonal and relational thinkers, such as Erich Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan, Dr. Stern highlights the tension between the evidence-based, scientific idea of psychoanalysis and the broader, less empirical takes on this protean practice. Incorporating the thought of Hans-Georg Gadamer, he proposes that we “recognize that the hermeneutic position about the study and evaluation of psychoanalytic treatment is a valid way of thinking about these problems, and one that contradicts the objectivist agenda of systematic empirical research.” Aware of the challenges this recognition may entail, Dr. Stern spends a portion of this interview discussing an issue many humanistic analysts may face: namely, that of insurance providers requesting objective measures of improvement of health.

While illuminating his theory of the mind as it exists within the field, Dr. Stern also discusses the personal aspect of his career. We learn about his educational journey to psychoanalysis, as well as his love for literature. Dr. Stern emphasizes the creative aspect of psychoanalysis in a fashion appropriately creative, and consequently engaging.â€‹

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Alexander Etkind, “Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied” (Stanford UP, 2013) Jul 26, 2015

Theoretical and historical accounts of postcatastrophic societies often discuss melancholia and trauma at length but leave processes of mourning underexplored. In Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied (Stanford UP, 2013), Alexander Etkind shows why mourning is more conducive to cultural analysis. Where trauma is unsymbolized and melancholia is contained within the self, mourning is often an address to the other.Mourning might entail attempts to remember, creatively work through, and make manifest losses in poetry, memorials, histories, painting, and other art forms.Without access to the unconscious, cultural historians can only engage what has already been represented and written — that which has materiality and symbolic richness.Individual and mutigenerational testaments and rituals of mourning — warped, haunted, and incomplete — are all that scholars have available.

Warped Mourning is about how three generations spanning the Soviet and post-Soviet periods have mourned the millions who perished in the Terror, the Stalinist political repressions of the 1930s.Etkind peruses a broad array of writings and artifacts, offering interpretations inflected by insights from psychoanalysis and critical theory.Autobiographies, fiction, film, visual art, academic writings, and sites of memory like monuments contribute to a complex rendering of the work and evolution of mourning: from the mimetic and demetaphorized (potentially deadly) performative acts in the 1950s by those who directly experienced the gulag, to the still traumatized and politicized mourning by their children in the 1960s and 1970s, and, finally, to the more estranged or distanced remembrances of the post-Soviet years and today. Etkind argues that the killings and torture of the Soviet period were not fully worked through for a number of reasons: the gulag was state violence (and the state controlled public mourning), the division between perpetrators and victims was far from clear, and mourning the persecuted eventually became entwined with mourning the ideas of communism.Unfinished mourning and consequent improper burial and recognition of purge victims produced a culture replete with specters and uncanny monsters.The unpaid debt to the dead also created a strange temporality.Until recently, perhaps, Russia’s present has been flooded by the past.In the absence of proper monuments or sufficient memory making, history haunts Russia, propelling its politics and shaping its narratives with an immediacy and force unknown in the West.

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Brenda Berger and Stephanie Newman, eds., “Money Talks in Therapy, Society, and Life” (Routledge, 2011) Jul 09, 2015

What meaning does money have in psychic life? And where does clinical psychoanalytic work fall in the realm of commerce? Does money play an inherently alienating role with regards to the psychoanalytic subject? Or might it contain meaning crucial to the patient’s progress? In Money Talks in Therapy, Society, and Life (Routledge, 2011), Brenda Berger and Stephanie Newman present a collection covering a wide range on the topic from varied psychoanalytic perspectives. With contributions from Muriel Dimen, Robert Glick, Theodore Jacobs, and others, money is understood in terms of psychosexuality, greed, envy, narcissism, sexuality, loss, the economics among candidates in psychoanalytic training institutes, and its ever-present roll in the transference/countertransference matrix.

In the interview Berger describes the ways in which money was split off and denied in clinical psychoanalysis in the years leading up to the economic crash of 2008, and how this was followed by a re-emergence within the field after 2008. Berger offers compelling clinical examples to illuminate the ways in which landscape shifted dramatically after the crash, as money became, more and more, a container for psychic meaning. We discuss the ways in which the loss of money often facilitated deepening shifts within the treatment, as well as the psychic implications of financial fallout and what the current economic realities might mean for psychoanalysis in general.

Brenda Berger is Assistant Clinical Professor of Medical Psychology in Psychiatry and Senior Associate Director for Psychology at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Dr. Berger is in private practice in New York City and Larchmont, NY, working with couples, individuals, and groups.

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Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkoler, eds., “Lacan on Madness: Madness, Yes You Can’t” (Routledge, 2015) Jun 20, 2015

Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkoler reminded me of something very important and unsettling: I have a brush with madness every night. Most of us do – when we dream. Or fall in love; or write poetry; or free-associate. Madness resides within all speaking beings and erupts in the most ordinary activities. In fact, ordinariness, rationality, and normalcy can be the most maddening phenomena of all. In editing Lacan on Madness: Madness, Yes You Can’t (Routledge, 2015) Gherovici and Steinkoler consciously employ the non-nosological, capacious — one might even say literary – term “madness” to resist normative and abjecting approaches to the insane and think in novel and flexible ways about both psychosis and neurosis. Eschewing diagnostic categories like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, the editors embrace “madness” precisely because it exceeds the DSM and the clinic, does not lend itself easily to medication, and inspires controversy and innovative reflection.

The volume brings together eighteen impressive Lacanian theorists and analysts and invites them to ponder encounters with madness in the clinical setting and in the everyday. Several offer fresh perspectives on the category of psychosis – “ordinary,” atypical, melancholic, and otherwise; a few allow madness to elicit new technique and modes of listening in the clinical setting; others focus on madness in contemporary culture.Some of the most daring chapters describe and interpret the creative ways authors, both famous and unknown, stave off madness or convert it into art. While maintaining that we cannot choose to go crazy, most authors insist that we can direct madness to productive ends.

The volume asks difficult questions. Is madness dire oppression or radical freedom? The abyss or the pinnacle of subjectivity? Darkness or the repository of truth and knowledge?Both in print and in this interview, the contributors and editors of Lacan on Madness provide varied, paradoxical, and inspiring answers.

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Emily Kuriloff, “Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Third Reich” (Routledge, 2013) Jun 02, 2015

In her new book, Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Third Reich: History, Memory, Tradition (Routledge, 2013), Emily Kuriloff details a dimension of psychoanalytic history that has never been so extensively documented: The impact of the Shoah on the not only the psychoanalysts who were directly involved, but also the aftershocks to later generations of analysts and the effect on theoretical developments on the field.

Utilizing scholarly research, personal interviews and first-person accounts, Kuriloff contends in our interview that the events that analysts lived through in the years leading up to, and through World War II, led them to disavow the effects of trauma on their work. It has only been more recently, when later generations have reconsidered these events, and with the emergence of the relational paradigm, that analysts have been able to integrate concepts of trauma and dissociation into their analytic lives. Her book is essential reading not only for psychoanalysts and students of history but for anyone interested in the continuing aftershocks of the Holocaust.

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Michelle Ann Stephens, “Skin Acts: Race, Psychoanalysis and the Black Male Performer” (Duke UP, 2014) May 28, 2015

Why would Bert Williams, famous African-American vaudeville performer of the early twentieth century, feel it necessary to apply burnt cork blackface make-up to his already dark skin, in order to emphasize “blackness”? According to Michelle Ann Stephens, this was one question about the space between realness, race, and performance that led her to write Skin Acts: Race, Psychoanalysis and the Black Male Performer (Duke University Press, 2014). Stephens investigates the history of the concept of the skin, especially in relation to the notion of the flesh, and how they are both re-written by colonialization, and the idea of racial difference. Stephens turns to the work of four iconic black male stars whose careers span the twentieth century–including Bert Williams, Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte and Bob Marley–and explores the dynamic between the gaze, representation and technology, and how these performers challenged notions of race, sexuality, and skin/flesh in the act of performing. Stephens uses psychoanalytic theory to understand the role of the viewer and the viewed and how the gaze operates as a racial and racializing object. Calling on the work of cultural theorists, Merleau-Ponty, Fanon, Lacan, Jessica Benjamin, and Sylvia Winter among so many others, Stephens takes the reader along on a bold new attempt to relate psychoanalysis, race, and gender identity in fresh, optimistic, and clinically promising ways.

Michelle Stephens teaches in the Departments of English and Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Originally from Jamaica, West Indies, she graduated from Yale University with a Ph.D. in American Studies and teaches courses in African American, American, Caribbean and Black Diaspora Literature and Culture. She is the author of Black Empire: The Masculine Global Imaginary of Caribbean Intellectuals in the United States, 1914 to 1962 (Duke University Press, 2005).She is currently in training at the The William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology.

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Frank Summers, “The Psychoanalytic Vision” (Routledge, 2013) Apr 13, 2015

In The Psychoanalytic Vision: The Experiencing Subject, Transcendence, and the Therapeutic Process (Routledge, 2013), Frank Summers has written a wholly original work of theory, technique and cultural critique. Privileging terms not often used in psychoanalytic writing, among them romanticism, transcendence and futurity, Summers documents an as yet undocumented shift in the field. In an effort to buttress the standing of psychoanalysis as a science, psychoanalysts previously attempted to delineate certain laws pertaining to the psyche, ranging from the Oedipus complex to notions of the self; now, according to Summers, the majority of analysts attend primarily to the experience of their patients. As such, psychoanalysis has become a “science of the subjective.”

Critiquing the field for reifying concepts like “the unconscious” and for perhaps unwittingly playing along with a culture that maximally commodifies humanity, Summers suggests we position psychoanalysis on the perimeter of the American mainstream. “Any view of analysis that presupposes a norm,” he writes, “may justifiably be labeled wild analysis, irrespective of theoretical content.” In fact he cogently argues that there may be a new divide among analysts that has nothing to do with metapsychology but rather more to do with technique. The new “classical” analyst applies theory to their clinical work deductively, using the patient to prove a theory right rather than exploring with the patient what constitutes their sense of things.

Influenced by Loewald, Benjamin, Stern, Heidegger, Husserl and Winnicott, among others, Summers has nevertheless developed his own clinical metier. When he turns his trenchant eye to the culture and the impact of new technologies upon us, one shivers with recognition. It is high time that psychoanalysts begin to take on the culture industry, assessing its powerful impact on what it means to be human. In this interview Summers does this and more.

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Jean Petrucelli, “Body-States” (Routledge, 2014) Apr 01, 2015

Responding to a significant lacuna in psychoanalytic literature, Jean Petrucelli has put together an impressive book that approaches the eating-disordered patient from interpersonal and relational perspectives. Just as the papers within Body States:Interpersonal and Relational Perspectives on the Treatment of Eating Disorders (Routledge, 2014)animate the twin themes of dissociation and integration, so too do the authors illustrate how these forces shape interpersonal relationships, body-states, self-states, as well as, ultimately, the ability to functionally shift between selves.

One may well agree with Philip Bromberg when he remarks in his Foreword, “Do not be fooled by the format. It is the groundbreaking perspective of Dr. Petrucelli that inspires each chapter, and my use of the word groundbreaking should not be taken lightly.” Indeed, the undeniable coherence of this volume springs from each writer’s affirmation of and convincing argument for the ability of interpersonal and relational analysis to uniquely – and perhaps best – treat eating-disordered patients in an integrative fashion. Such is the groundbreaking thesis Dr. Petrucelli presents in Body-States and discusses at length in her interview.

Bringing together myriad voices, Dr. Petrucelli manages to strike a harmonious but nonetheless sophisticated cord while adding her own voice to the mix. Beginning with a description of the psychoanalytic climate of the 1990s, she goes on to explain how she and others had to fight in order to convince the psychoanalytic establishment to consider eating-disorders seriously. Dr. Petrucelli then examines the notion of “participant-observer” and argues that eating-disordered patients find it especially difficult to exist in the spaces between being the subject-who-desires and the object-who-is/isn’t-desired.

Thoughout the course of our conversation, she addresses not only the aforementioned points but many more, including the origins of eating-disorders as well as the role culture may play in transmitting body-states from mother to daughter. In fact, near the close of this interview, the author expertly handles the question of what sort of wellness can women achieve living in an ill society (where aggressive systems of sexual/body-based objectification pervade)?

Dealing with big questions, Dr. Petrucelli provides answers well worth savoring.

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Susan Kavaler-Adler, “Anatomy of Regret” (Karnac, 2013) Mar 17, 2015

The metaphorical construction of Susan Kavaler-Adler‘s Anatomy of Regret: From Death Instinct to Reparation and Symbolization through Vivid Clinical Cases (Karnac, 2013)evokes the complexities that have wrought psychoanalysis since its beginning of talking about the mind in the language of the body.As it subtitle tells us, the anatomy of this book is structured by the case study.

If there is something that informs Alder’s approach to understanding psychoanalysis and how she intervenes in the psychoanalytic encounter, its that where theory fails, the body succeeds. Regret, for Kavaler-Adler, is a bodily experience that orients us in some way to the unconscious consequences of our relationships – of the actions of other bodies in our lives.

In telling the stories of these case studies, Kavaler-Adler performs a kind of surgical suturing of theory along the sinews of loss – the scars left at the site of the aggression of the other. She begins with the important insight that something was at stake in Freud’s theory of mourning and melancholia – something that had to do with the aggressive ties that bind the self to the other and the impossibility of distinguishing the two but leaves Freud here, his theory having already become arrested in the language of the body and the physical laws a theory of the drive drive must adhere to.

In her thinking, Kavaler-Adler stitches Freud to the British psychoanalytic thinker Melanie Klein (and to Object Relation theorists after her) who situates mourning in a developmental context. In doing so, she stiches boundary of the anatomical to the symbolic, through the language of her cases. The Anatomy of Regret serves to articulate an affect theory that is uniquely its own, but for those new to psychoanalysis, or those who want a new way of thinking of psychoanalysis, informs about the theory it draws from in a meaningful way.

Dr. Susan Kavaler Adler is a psychoanalyst in private practice and the founder of the Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and an ABBP for Diplomat status from the American Professional Board of Psychology and the Division of Psychoanalysis. For her work analyzing the language of mourning, loss, and regret, through bodily language, in the work of iconic women writers, Dr. Kavaler-Adler was awarded an honorary doctorate of literature.

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Paul Geltner, “Emotional Communication: Countertransference Analysis and the Use of Feeling in Psychoanalytic Technique” (Routledge 2013) Mar 06, 2015

With Emotional Communication: Countertransference Analysis and the Use of Feeling in Psychoanalytic Technique (Routledge, 2013), Paul Geltner has written the definitive textbook on countertransference. No book, to my knowledge comes even close to this accomplishment. Most analysts are taught that countertransferences are the idiosyncratic feelings of the analyst. Geltner begins with the radical assumption that all of the analyst’s feelings should be considered inductions by the patient until proven otherwise. Geltner describes the many ways in which emotional communications can be induced and expands concept of countertransference into discrete observable categories with clinically useful examples.

In this interview, Dr. Geltner discusses the Modern Psychoanalytic underpinnings of his thinking about emotional communications, the field founded by Hyman Spotnitz. He describes the different types of countertransference and how understanding what the patient is inducing in the analyst is a main focus of the Modern Psychoanalytic technique. Working beyond interpretations that a based in language, Geltner describes how the Modern Psychoanalytic theory of cure includes not only words, but also the analyst’s use of emotional communication to meet the patient’s unmet maturational needs.

Dr. Geltner is in private practice in New York City, working with individuals and couples. He specializes in individual and group supervision with psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists.

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Lynn Chancer and John Andrews, “The Unhappy Divorce of Sociology and Psychoanalysis” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014) Feb 12, 2015

The Unhappy Divorce of Sociology and Psychoanalysis: Diverse Perspectives on the Psychosocial (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014)is an edited volume. Its chapters document the central place of psychoanalysis in American sociology in the 1950s and sketch the backstory to that relationship. The core chapters expose the campaign waged by leading sociologists to discredit psychoanalysis as they sought legitimacy for the discipline through the adoption of positivist research paradigms. Some of that story is told through biographical and autobiographical accounts. The co-editors are among the authors of the book’s 18 chapters as are Neil Smelser, Nancy Chodorow, George Steinmetz, and Jeffrey Prager.

In this interview, the volume’s editors, Lynn Chancer andJohn Andrews, respond to questions about the political climate surrounding “the divorce” and add their reflections on the standing of psychoanalysis in sociology in the early years of the 21st century.

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Sally Weintrobe, “Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives” (Routledge, 2012) Feb 11, 2015

How up to date are you on the projected impact of climate change on human civilization in the next 100 years? Once you look at latest predictions, quickly come back and listen to this interview with Sally Weintrobe, because she brings a much-needed, yet realistic sense of hope to what most people consider a dire picture. Weintrobe, a practicing psychoanalyst and Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London, organized an interdisciplinary conference of psychoanalysts, philosophers, scientists, and sociologists to address a burning question: why is knowledge of climate reality being so resisted? (The conference in its entirety is posted online in 6 parts here.)

Weintrobe contributed to and edited this book of essays by 23 authors, and it is an important document of current psychoanalytic thinking on the nexus of splitting, denial, reintegration– and love- in the context of how we conceive of nature. How are we split-off from our childlike affection for nature? How does neo-liberal capitalism promote alienation from nature and from others? What would it mean to engage with a realistic– and not grandiose– experience of nature and the impact of climate change, which allows for mourning and care? In discussion, Weintrobe offers touching examples of processing these questions, while also going in unexpected directions, such as analyzing sound production in “nature” films. All in all, Weintrobe’s project promises to inspire new perspectives on climate change and hope for action.

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Daniel Shaw, “Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation” (Routledge, 2013) Jan 28, 2015

Conventional psychoanalytic views of narcissism focus on familiar character traits: grandiosity, devaluation, entitlement and a lack of empathy. In his new book Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation (Routledge, 2013), Daniel Shaw explores narcissism from a relational perspective, concentrating on the effect that the traumatizing narcissist can have on others. Shaw defines the traumatizing narcissist as the parent of a child, a leader of a cult, a partner in a couple or others who abuse their power, use their charisma and knowledge of human nature to subjugate. This power dynamic can lead to maladaptive patterns such as compliance, dissociation and the taking on of the abusive behaviors of the narcissist by thepatient.

To elucidate his conceptualization, Shaw writes chapters on clinical theory, his practice with patients effected by narcissism and his own past history as a cult member. Shaw illustrates how the therapeutic relationship can be healing by helping the patient reclaim a sense of subjectivity that has been lost. Our interview concludes with an exploration of traumatizing narcissism in the psychoanalytic profession, both in the consulting room and the institute setting.

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Bruce Fink, “Against Understanding: Volume 2: Cases and Commentary in a Lacanian Key” (Routledge, 2014) Jan 13, 2015

Bruce Fink joins me for a second interview to discuss Volume 2 of Against Understanding: Cases and Commentary in a Lacanian Key (Routledge, 2014). We talk about everything from desire, jouissance, and love to variable-length sessions and “why anyone in their right mind would pay for analysis.” Just like one might go to a personal trainer to shed some pounds, one goes to an analyst to lose something. We often enter analysis against our will and immediate interests, kicking and screaming, to have our symptoms – the sources of our most precious satisfaction and exquisite misery — taken away. We pay, in other words, to be castrated. This is a better deal than it initially seems: we cede self-pity related to primordial loss – the loss of something we never had in the first place – in order to be able to pursue our desire and derive more joy from our enjoyment.

In the second volume of Against Understanding, the initial chapters on practice and technique cover fundamental questions like the goal of analysis, ethics, diagnosis and fantasy. Next there are several close readings of Lacan’s papers and seminars on Kant and Sade, semblance, personality, and love. The Cases section takes up the themes of the earlier chapters, demonstrating Fink’s talent for communicating complex ideas in a direct and remarkably limpid style. He wades through Lacan’s explanation of why and how both sadists and masochists seek to stage the other’s anxiety; discusses the role semblance-as-ideology might play in fantasy; and interpolates Freud’s phases of “a child is being beaten” to get at the specific ways several of his analysands fantasize and enjoy.

True to Lacanian theory and practice, Fink does not lay emphasis on affect and empathy as central facets of technique in the book. Yet, during our interview, as he discusses his reluctance to display mastery in case presentations and reveals his willingness to stretch (and not only scand) sessions of patients in crisis, his compassion and humility are very much in evidence.

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Liran Razinsky, “Freud, Psychoanalysis, and Death” (Cambridge UP, 2013) Jan 05, 2015

Liran Razinsky’s book, titled Freud, Psychoanalysis, and Death (Cambridge University Press, 2014) came out of a decade’s long attempt to reconcile Liran’s personal search for meaning within two areas of professional inquiry: philosophy, and psychology.These two fields are intimately related in that each asks essential questions about what it means to be a human subject that lives always in the face of death. However divergent in their systems of logic, each runs the risk of loosing its subject to its own ethos.Psychoanalysis is more functional theoretically when thought of as a philosophical system, but its applications were intended to be clinical.For Razinsky, psychoanalysis succumbs to the split in these two fields in its conception of death.

Those who lived to be intellectually killed by Freud as he claimed their ideas as his own, knew that Freud had no limits in refusing the limit of his life.He would destroy individual egos–and entire careers–in building a legacy that would outlast him.He got what he wanted but at what cost?Where is death to be found in a system structured by a man who refused loss?Those psychoanalytic thinkers who have survived him have had to live with his legacy and its confusing logic.

Razinsky reads Freud’s conceptualizations of death against themselves, at different places in his body of work, and against those that came after him. He argues that there is an essential problematic in the way Freud considers death which, for psychoanalysis to survive as a philosophical system with clinical applications must be addressed. Beyond this, however, the book raises a discussion about the limits of subjectivity: both literal, as in the case of death, and symbolic, as in the ways in which we imagine ourselves in relationship to it.

Liran Razinsky is a lecturer at The Program for Hermeneutics and Culture at Bar Ilan University in Israel where he conducts research at the disjuncture between philosophy, and psychoanalysis, life and death.

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Gohar Homayounpour, “Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran” (MIT Press, 2012) Dec 19, 2014

In Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran (MIT Press, 2012) — part memoir, part elegy, and part collection of clinical vignettes — Gohar Homayounpour takes a defiant position against the Orientalizing gaze of Western publishers, editors, and journalists who search in her book for the exotic Iranian subject and the trauma of the Eastern Other. She turns a critical eye on the expectation that she perform an unveiling and reveal knowledge about the Other’s otherness. Insisting that “pain is pain” everywhere and that the Other’s foreignness also resides in oneself, she instead talks about her own sense of dislocation and loss upon returning to Tehran to start a clinical practice after twenty years in the United States. Iranian patients face problems specific to their country’s politics and culture, to be sure, but for Homayounpour, experience in the consulting room confirms the universality of the Oedipus complex. In response to a colleague in Boston who questioned whether “Iranians can free associate,” Homayounpour quips that “they do nothing but, and that is their problem.” While in the United States neurotics are rumored to have disappeared from psychoanalytic couches, replaced by patients with supposedly more “primitive” narcissistic organization and borderline personality disorders, in Tehran, claims Homayounpour, consummately neurotic analysands dominate the clinical landscape, speaking constantly of sex, sexuality, and typically Oedipal conflicts. The resemblance of Iranian analysands to the patients of Freud’s Vienna has nothing to do with Eastern essence or backwardness, of course, and everything to do with collective fantasy, analytic training, cultural structures, and varying iterations of capitalism.

In the book as well as in our interview, Homayounpour’s poetics and politics brim with warmth and hospitality – not a humanitarian hospitality, or altruism, that too easily transforms into guilt and then sadism, she hastens to clarify, but one that emerges from gratitude and an ability to be with the other’s difference.

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Jennifer Kunst, “Wisdom From the Couch: Knowing and Growing Yourself from the Inside Out” (Central Recovery Press, 2014) Dec 13, 2014

What happens when a Kleinian psychoanalyst wants to write an intelligent self-help book for the general reader? First, she recognizes that one must have an online platform from which to launch, so she starts a blog called “The Headshrinker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Then she sets about writing her debut book, Wisdom From the Couch: Knowing and Growing Yourself from the Inside Out (Central Recovery Press, 2014). Dr. Jennifer Kunst began to write not only to fulfill a personal dream but to help her patients and the public at large ponder the question: how is it that perfectly intelligent people do such obviously counterproductive things so much of the time? Vis a vis Klein these answers reside in the unconscious, in our internalized object constellations and in at least some recognition of how difficult it is to live in the world with its inevitable pain, loss, disappointment and imperfection. Many of the concepts that Klein felt were central to the human condition are laid out in the book: omnipotence, mania, splitting, projective identification, ambivalence, the paranoid/schizoid and the depressive positions to name a few.

In this interview Kunst explains that above all, Melanie Klein was intensely concerned with love. And she was passionate about making sense of the process by which people learn to love one another in all its forms: parental, platonic, romantic and analytic. It goes something like this: we are designed as highly emotional creatures who love and hate in equal measure. For Klein, the question of how we remain in loving connection with one another while accepting loss, hurt and inevitable disappointment was key. Kunst writes, “Aggression and desire, envy and gratitude, hope and dread are all roommates in the inner world.” One of the tasks of mature development is getting these opposing parts of our self in dialogue with one another achieving a kind of working harmony. Enter Kunst’s translation of the depressive position: all roommates are welcome at the table.

Dr. Jennifer Kunst has an uncanny knack for translating Melanie Klein’s complex theory of the mind into psychically nutritious bits. In Kleinian parlance, it’s a proper feed.

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Bruce Fink, “Against Understanding. Volume 1: Commentary and Critique in a Lacanian Key” (Routledge, 2014) Nov 17, 2014

What can possibly be wrong with the process of understanding in psychoanalytic treatment? Everything, according to Bruce Fink. In Against Understanding. Volume 1: Commentary and Critique in a Lacanian Key (Routledge, 2014), he argues that since understanding is part of the Lacanian imaginary, it often leads to fixed assumptions and projections on the part of both analyst and analysand, inhibiting change, or the curative in psychoanalysis. Many of us probably have heard ourselves and others say that understanding why we do something hurtful or destructive does not seem to stop us from doing it; again and again and again. In the clinical vignettes, case studies, and theoretical papers compiled in this volume Fink suggests that rather than understanding, clinicians ought to strive to bring the unconscious to speech – to help analysands communicate knowledge once residing in the unconscious. Such knowledge is generated not through narrative, insight, or meaning making but parapraxes, slurred speech, and mixed metaphors – the non-sense produced by the subject of the unconscious. Speaking that which was previously unsymbolizable shakes the ego at its foundation and enables therapeutic change.

A section of Against Understanding is devoted to interviews conducted with the author about his translations of Lacan and the work of translation generally. We touch on issues of translation in our interview as well, highlighting the creativity, pleasures, frustrations, and compromises involved in the process. Bruce Fink and I have only begun to explore his theoretical and clinical writings. Please stay tuned for the next installment in a few months, when we will discuss volume 2of this incisive and thought-provoking collection.

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Sophia Richman, “Mended By the Muse: Creative Transformations of Trauma” (Routledge, 2014) Oct 21, 2014

In a wide ranging and courageous interview that touched on the creative process, personal history, memoir and self-disclosure, the psychoanalyst and writer Sophia Richman explored the connections between trauma and the creative process. Although many have written about the arts and psychoanalysis, utilizing contemporary relational thinking, Richman brings the discussion vividly into the present day.

In Mended By the Muse: Creative Transformations of Trauma (Routledge, 2014), Sophia Richman skillfully uses her own history as a holocaust survivor and writer to illustrate the healing power of the creative process. In addition to her own experience, Richman writes about artists she has interviewed, as well as theorists that have been influential to her such as Winnicott and Jung. Richman believes that the creative process allows one to “bear witness” to the unspeakable, and that the arts can lead to growth both inside and outside of the consulting room.

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Mark Epstein, “The Trauma of Everyday Life” (Penguin Press, 2013) Oct 13, 2014

Being human, much of our energy goes into resisting the basic mess of life, but messy it is nonetheless. The trick (as psychoanalysts know) is to embrace it all anyway. “Trauma is an indivisible part of human existence. It takes many forms but spares no one,” so writes psychiatrist and practicing Buddhist Dr. Mark Epstein. Epstein illustrates this truth by offering a psychoanalytic reading of the life of the Buddha in his latest work, The Trauma of Everyday Life (Penguin Press, 2013). It’s a brilliant psychobiographical single-case study. Think Erik Erikson’s Ghandi’s TruthorYoung Man Luther.

A little known detail of the Buddha’s biography is that his mother died when he was just seven days old. The book investigates the nature and repercussions of this early loss as a foundation of the Buddha’s life and salvation. Epstein writes that “primitive agony” (ala Winnicott) lay in the Buddha’s implicit memory coloring his experience in ways he could feel but never know. The unmetabolized grief plays out into Buddha’s young adulthood as he abandons his wife and own young child in renunciation of his cushy and privileged life. The ghosts and psychic ancestors that haunt the Buddha as well as his separation-individuation drama are familiar to modern day clinicians. Epstein describes a Buddha in the throes of repetition compulsion as well as enacting practices of starvation and self-harm—dissociative defenses that serve to ward off potential fragmentation. Epstein writes that the rhythm of this early trauma and the defenses the Buddha employed run through Buddhism like a “great underground river.” Buddha’s salvation comes about via the discovery of mindfulness which ultimately infuse his life and spiritual teaching. Within the meditative practice of mindfulness, a holding environment is created in which unknown and unexamined aspects of the past can be experienced for the first time in the here and now. Like the psychoanalytic encounter, therein lies its transformative power. In his detailed depictions of the Buddha as a human subject in formation and borrowing from Winnicott’s metapsychology, Epstein draws the parallel to the psychoanalytic space. Ultimately the book asks whether trauma itself can be transformational. According to Epstein, yes. Life itself is already broken and since we can’t control the essential traumas of life (whether they be big “T” or little) we must transform our relationship to them to go on being.

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Thomas Kohut, “A German Generation: An Experiential History of the Twentieth Century” (Yale UP, 2012), Oct 06, 2014

Germans belonging to the generation born at the turn of the twentieth century endured staggering losses, many of which became difficult to mourn or even acknowledge: their parents in World War I, financial and physical security during the Weimar Republic, the racially pure utopian promise of the Third Reich, and likely several loved ones in the catastrophic final throes of World War II and the privation of the immediate postwar period.

Thomas Kohut, in his provocative and moving book, A German Generation: An Experiential History of the Twentieth Century (Yale University Press, 2012), argues that the Weimar-youth generation’s inability to work through these losses informed its members’ particular brand of anti-Semitism, enabling them to look away from the Holocaust and leading them to seek comfort in the collective, the Volksgemeinschaft – initially in the Youth Movement, then the Reich Work Service, and finally the Free German Circle in their twilight years. The turn to the collective not only compensated for loss but also impeded empathy for the plight of Jewish neighbors and engendered chronic optimism and psychic fragility.

Through an analysis of sixty-two oral history interviews condensed into six composites, Kohut argues for the importance of empathy (defined as thinking one’s way into the experience of another) for both history and the consulting room. Empathy facilitates reparative mourning and guilt while its absence — as affect, social practice, and critical category – can have devastating, indeed genocidal, consequences.

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John Fletcher, “Freud and the Scene of Trauma” (Fordham UP, 2013) Sep 29, 2014

Putting Freud’s books — not the man but the writings — on the couch, listening closely for the breaks, the retractions, the internal conflicts, the sudden about-faces. John Fletcher, professor of English literature, reads Freud very, very closely. When we view Freud’s work as an unfolding process, the main themes are often not even what Freud himself conceptualized. In Freud and the Scene of Trauma (Fordham University Press, 2013), Fletcher traces how Freud’s thought — including on trauma, seduction, memory, the transference, child development, the death drive — is pulled toward two wildly opposed positions simultaneously: a de-centering of human subjectivity, where the other person with a sexuality and an unconscious acts on us to form the basis of psychical life; and a recoiling, re-centering of the idea of the individual, now seen as sui genris, formed entirely from the inside out. This movement between these two poles is meticulously followed as Freud’s ideas oscillate — often from paragraph to paragraph. The entire spectacle is seen as a sort of enactment of a psychoanalytic conflict where a reaction to the too-muchness of the other is the basis of our formation.

25 lectures from Fletcher’s undergraduate course, which can act as a sort of introduction to his book, can be found here.

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Mari Ruti, “The Call of Character: Living a Life Worth Living” (Columbia UP, 2013) Sep 21, 2014

Exploring everything from the impact of her own psychoanalysis on her mode and mien to the effect of consumer culture on the psyche, the delightful Mari Ruti keeps the ball rolling. We pondered with her so many things that the interview feels like xmas morning! Traversing the advent of self-help books, Lacan, the Frankfurt School, the super ego, the repetition compulsion, hegemony, trauma, love and more, there is seemingly no topic germane to psychoanalysis and daily life that Ruti shies away from.

In The Call of Character: Living a Life Worth Living (Columbia University Press, 2013)–a book akin in spirit to McDougall’s Plea for a Measure of Abnormality albeit without the case studies–Ruti argues that a bit of madness is an agreeable thing. Loving one’s symptom lessens its impact for sure. As such, Ruti embraces Lacan rather fully as she argues for the ways in which desire can produce forms of human subjectivity that don’t reproduce the normative. By helping us to identify what lures us away from listening more carefully to the “call” of our own “characters”, Ruti plots a course to live a life worth living.

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Elizabeth Lunbeck, “The Americanization of Narcissism” (Harvard UP, 2014) Aug 21, 2014

Elizabeth Lunbeck has made a major contribution to the historical study of psychoanalysis with the publication of The Americanization of Narcissism (Harvard University Press, 2014). Exploring the concept of narcissism and how it is deployed at the level of culture, she has produced a multi-textured book that is one part history of ideas, one part history of psychoanalysis and one part cultural history. The admixture yields a good read and, in this interview, Lunbeck reveals herself to be quick on her feet and sturdy in her thinking in all three realms. It was easy to imagine being in one of the history classes she teaches at Vanderbilt, perched on the edge of the seat, endeavoring to keep apace of a mind that is comfortable with small details and large concepts all at once.

She argues that at mid-century, critics of American culture, including the man who hired her for her first teaching job at University of Rochester, Christopher Lasch, made much of the idea that narcissism was ruining the American character. Lunbeck questions his understanding of narcissism–wherein a person is soft, weak, needy and seeking salvation through consumerism–and the book unfolds from there. Relying largely on the thinking of the psychoanalysts, Otto Kernberg and Heinz Kohut, who both wrote volumes about narcissistic personalities and their treatment, we come to see that just as the culture critics were using the idea of narcissism to make their point, psychoanalysts were in deep discussion as to how to treat and understand the narcissists that lay on their couches.

Lunbeck sets out to explore key concepts in the history of this term and offers up chapters on “self-love”, “independence”, “vanity”, “gratification”, “inaccessibility”, and “identity.” Each term reveals something about the interaction between culture and psychoanalysis, and as such each chapter offers a particular prism through which to think more fully about narcissism and the many shapes it has taken. Questions emerge: Are narcissists grandiose individuals who need no one? Are people who reject dependency truly strong? Were people who lacked good feelings about themselves and so used others to get “the narcissistic supplies” in need of tough love or of gratification on the couch? Is the quest for pleasure the end of the social contract?

In this interview these and other topics are covered, leaving one with the lasting impression that the idea of narcissism has served many purposes both within the culture and within the profession of psychoanalysis. Mining this quite malleable concept, Lunbeck may have given it a proper container, a way in which it can, at last, take a clearer shape.

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Claudia Luiz, “Where’s My Sanity? Stories That Help” (CreateSpace, 2013) Aug 02, 2014

Join us for a maximum dopamine experience as Dr. Claudia Luiz discusses the making of her book Where’s My Sanity? Stories That Help, an everyman’s tour de force that’s poised to create a seismic shift in the cultural consciousness. Psychoanalysis has been as yet unsuccessful in seducing the gentry that lying on the couch is where the action is. Dr. Luiz’s mission is to help people understand that it’s emotional experiences that create change vs. short-term prescriptive steps (12 of them or otherwise). To this end she is a psychoanalytic ambassador of sorts.

During this interview, Dr. Luiz first describes her process of writing the book – a process she likens to artistry and an attempt to strike the right ‘note’ between herself as author and reader as audience (Luiz’ parents are both analysts and former music virtuosi). She undergoes a learning process with a non-analyst producer who helps her understand how an audience engages with media. She learns that the book must be pleasurable in order to deliver optimum dopamine to be engaging. This leads to natural associations to the psychoanalytic process. And she learns that what the audience craves is an analyst who will reveal herself. When it comes to being an analyst, there’s no such thing as being invisible anyway. Dr. Luiz has given a lot of thought to the analyst’s presence, digital or otherwise. She believes what the patient needs is an analyst comfortable with her presence and her emotions – whether they’re on Linked In, Facebook, Twitter or they’re affecting optimum analytic neutrality (which according to Luiz, doesn’t exist).

When it comes to discussing the general public’s lack of zeal for psychoanalysis, Luiz believes we have a definite P.R. problem. What we need to do is sell psychoanalysis in a way that is sexy. After all, what could be more sexy then someone who will listen to you, really understand you, be there for you no matter what and when hearing about your most negative and distasteful parts will want to know more and more? Psychoanalysis is sexy indeed. Claudia Luiz believes if we can sell the meta-theory to the right party, we might have a chance. Oprah, are you listening?

But besides the perils, pitfalls and hoped-for resurrection of the talking cure, Luiz gets into the technique (meat and potatoes) of working analytically with children, teens, parents and married adults. It’s a stimulating interview with one of Modern Psychoanalysis’ foremost practitioners.

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Adam Phillips, “Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst” (Yale UP, 2014) Jul 28, 2014

For those who are savvy about all things psychoanalytic, be they analysts, analysands, or fellow travelers, the existence, presence, work, writing, and imprimatur of Adam Phillips is given long, as opposed to short, shrift. It is safe to say that his voice is singular in its mellifluousness and its range.

I first encountered his writing at one of my dearest friend’s, and any second now new NBiP host and psychoanalyst Anne Wennerstrand’s wedding. Her husband, (doyen of the world of choreography), Doug Elkins, insisted I read a snippet from Phillip’s book, On Monogamy, before they slipped on their rings. This request placed the thinking of Phillips squarely into my casually bridesmaided lap. That Elkins, a dancer with what we then called “downtown” street credibility knew from Adam Phillips perhaps 15 years ago says something; and it says something about Phillips and his reach.

In Phillips’ most recent book, Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst (Yale UP, 2014), we encounter the biography of a man who thought the entire genre of biography was nothing but bunk. And yet, in this biography of Freud we also encounter a writer who seeks to show respect for Freud’s dis-ease if not utter disrespect for the attempt to write the story of his life. As such, the book illustrates Phillips’ clinical acumen as much as his mind, his writing mien, and the life of his subject. Demonstrating great caution, going up to the lip of certain facts without speculating unduly, like a savvy but sensitive psychoanalyst, Phillips offers the world a book that, like a true tree of life, grows in many directions at once. As no doubt it will be read by people unfamiliar with “the talking cure” it carries a heavy burden in a day and age that prefers writing/texting/emailing to talking a deux, forget entering into an analysis!

Embedded within the text we find a vast exploration of the difference between “telling one’s story” (on Oprah or in a blog as is de rigeur in the culture of confession du moment) and speaking in the analytic dyad. Ultimately, as compared with what real truths might be uttered in a psychoanalysis, indeed the facts of biography look paltry. And furthermore, as this is a book that plays hardball with commonplace conceptions of knowledge, data, and truth, as compared with the exploration of unruly desire and its vicissitudes, we find ourselves returned to Freud who told us that the truths we create for the public work well to hide the real thing, the kinds of archaic truths spoken solely within the confines of a psychoanalytic setting.

Phillips brings back the primacy of the sexual to Freud, and hence to psychoanalysis. Bring on the alleluia chorus and enjoy the interview!!

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Sharon K. Farber, “Hunger for Ecstasy: Trauma, the Brain, and the Influence of the Sixties” (Aronson, 2013) May 20, 2014

It may seem silly to ask why we seek ecstasy. We seek it, of course, because it’s ECSTASY. We are evolved to want it. It’s our brain’s way of saying “Do this again and as often as possible.” But there’s more to it than that. For one thing, there are many ways to get to ecstasy, and some of them are very harmful: cutting, starving, and, of course, drug-taking. These things may render an ecstatic state, but they will also kill you. Moreover, many of the ecstasy-inducing activities and substances are powerfully addictive. It’s fine, for example, for most people to use alcohol to feel more relaxed or even to achieve an ecstatic state. But something on the order of 10% to 15% of people cannot safely use alcohol at all without become seriously addicted. And once they do, they usually descend into a profoundly un-ecstatic nightmare that often ends in death.

According to Sharon K. Farber‘s Hungry for Ecstasy: Trauma, the Brain, and the Influence of the Sixties (Aronson, 2013), our desire for ecstasy is first and foremost a psychic defense that protects us against on-going or anticipated trauma. When reality (as we perceive it, which, of course, is not always or even often accurately) becomes “too much” for us, we seek refuge in altered states of consciousness. The most attractive of these, of course, is ecstasy. It makes everything frightening just “go away.” Sometimes, the ecstatic state appears spontaneously. More often, however, especially in our culture, it is consciously induced by self-harming and drug-taking. For most of us, this sort of self-medication “works.” For a large minority, however, it ends in addiction and death. Listen in.

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Steven Kuchuck, ed., “Clinical Implications of the Psychoanalyst’s Life Experience” (Routledge, 2013) Apr 26, 2014

Steven Kuchuck converses with NBiP about his newly edited book Clinical Implications of the Psychoanalyst’s Life Experience: When the Personal Becomes Professional (Routledge, 2013). It focuses on the impact of the analyst’s life experiences vis a vis their clinical mode and mien. The book, with 18 essays, (written by mostly relational or interpersonal analysts with the notable exception of the venerable Martin Bergmann) covers a lot of terrain. It is divided loosely into two parts, with the first section focusing on early life events and the second on later ones. So we read about the impact of surviving Auschwitz and how it colors Anna Ornstein’s clinical demeanor. And how Susie Orbach, growing up in a family full of both fiery left-wing passions and a plethora of secrets, found herself in possession of a heightened desire to bring things hidden out into the light. Eric Mendelsohn describes the end of his marriage and explores his work with patients during that time. Philip Ringstrom reviews certain familial themes regarding ecumenism and improvisation and iterates how they play out in his work as an analyst. Galit Atlas explores her interest in the vicissitudes of sexuality as derived from many sources, prominent among them her Mizrahi outsiderness. Noah Glassman and Steven Botticelli think through their becoming fathers together of a son and how their clinical listening was impacted. Variety abounds.

Many of the essays are deeply autobiographical. The reader is given a moment to peek into the analyst’s oft’ hidden inner workings. As such, the book satisfies something perhaps prurient. But what is discussed in the interview largely concerns what this book is also symptomatic of; it is no mistake that many writing herein are self-described refugees from what they perceived to be a more austere classical training where what the analyst brought into the clinical encounter was to be redacted. Additionally, the rigors of analytic work are myriad. In a culture that does not embrace the work of analysis, but rather sees fit to attack it, are analyst’s suffering from certain forms of deprivation? Certainly this book indicates a wish to be seen more fully. And the move towards analytic self-disclosure reaches a kind of apex in this publication. It is one thing to self-disclose to a patient in a session but this book can be read by all and sundry. So in the interview we also discuss the analyst’s needs and what stands in the way of their being met and how the psychoanalytic culture might begin to more frankly acknowledge their existence. The need to be seen stands in stark contrast to the ideal of neutrality. This book is reflective of the ever-swinging pendulum, and also the never-ending tension within 21st century psychoanalysis, regarding the now-perpetual lure of exploring the analyst’s subjectivity alongside the extreme importance of leaving room for the patient to elaborate, in an unimpeded way, fantasies, transferences and more.

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R. D. Hinshelwood, “Research on the Couch: Single-Case Studies, Subjectivity and Psychoanalytic Knowledge” (Routledge, 2013) Mar 02, 2014

Renewing and traversing the never-ending debate as to whether psychoanalysis is a science, R. D. Hinshelwood, British and on the Kleinian side of life, prompts listeners to consider how we might produce and buttress our knowledge base via implementing scientific methods. By discussing research as an offensive tactic, as opposed to a defensive one, in a world where psychoanalysis finds itself derided as lacking “evidence,” Hinshelwood’s Research on the Couch: Single-Case Studies, Subjectivity and Psychoanalytic Knowledge (Routledge, 2013) teaches us about the single case study and its usefulness for inquiring into the value (or lack) of particular metapsychologies and clinical theories.

Questions emerge: Will research on psychoanalysis, proving its usefulness, catch the attention of insurance companies and governmental policy makers, opening currently shut doors? Will affiliating ourselves with science strengthen us? In what ways might research be helpful?

Hinshelwood takes us on a tour as he responds to these and other questions in the interview and in the book. In the end we are left with an awareness that research borne of the clinical encounter can yield powerful data. For Freud the consulting room was also a laboratory, and the psychoanalytic method itself a form of research in and of itself. Yet, when it comes to research in the field, we seem to be up against something that at times feels tinged with the impossible. As Hinshelwood writes, “it appears that an extreme standard of mental health is often expected of psychoanalysts, and a suspicion is visited upon us if we are just ordinary.” The implications of this statement for the nature of our researches is plain to see. However, by placing psychoanalytic research adjacent to research in the natural sciences yet apart from research in psychology and medicine, Hinshelwood protects the uniqueness of the method we call the talking cure.

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Robert Stolorow, “World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis” (Routledge, 2011) Jan 06, 2014

In this interview with one of the founders of intersubjective psychoanalysis, Robert Stolorow discusses his interest in Heidegger and the implications of that interest for the psychoanalytic project overall. What do “worldness”, “everydayness”, and “resoluteness” bring to the clinical encounter? What is the role of trauma in bringing us to a more authentic place?

Stolorow is interested in pursuing both what Heidegger can do for psychoanalysis and what psychoanalysis can do, in a sense, for Heidegger. The development of “post-cartesian psychoanalysis” has embedded within it a critique of Freud’s intrapsychic focus. Analysts of the post-cartesian stripe seek to unearth “pre-reflectivity”, those modes of being that are part and parcel of us but remain out of our awareness. There is also expressed an interest in contextualism–and towards that end this book looks at Heidegger’s forays into Nazism as evidence of his own limits, precipitated perhaps by the loss of Hannah Arendt’s love and admiration. But for Stolorow, analytic work is best done by employing the tripartite perspective of phenomenology, hermeneutics and contextualism. Whereas Descartes separated mind and body, psyche and world, Stolorow argues for the importance of bringing those very same things back together.

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Lawrence J. Friedman, “The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet” (Columbia UP, 2013) Jan 02, 2014

Erich Fromm, one of the most widely known psychoanalysts of the previous century, was involved in the exploration of spirituality throughout his life. His landmark book The Art of Loving, which sold more than six million copies worldwide, is seen as a popular handbook on how to relate to others and how to overcome the narcissism ingrained in every human being. In his book The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet (Columbia University Press, 2013), Harvard professor Lawrence J. Friedman explores the life of this towering figure of psychoanalytic thought, and his position in the humanistic movement, which he belonged to. He gives an overview of the religious thought Fromm was inspired by, from Judaism to the Old Testament to Buddhist philosophy. Fromm’s credo was that true spirituality is expressed in how we relate to others, and how to bring joy and peace to the global community. His plea that love will be the vehicle to realize one’s true purpose was the central message of his view on spirituality.

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Lewis Aron and Karen Starr, “A Psychotherapy for the People: Towards a Progressive Psychoanalysis” (Routledge, 2013) Nov 29, 2013

In this interview, held before a live audience at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies in New York City, Lewis Aron and Karen Starr discuss their wide ranging history of the roots of conservatism in American psychoanalysis, A Psychotherapy for the People: Towards a Progressive Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2013). Beginning with the nefarious impact of anti-semitism on Freud’s theorizing, the authors argue that in an attempt to protect his ideas from being devalued as emanating from the mind a Jewish thinker, he phallicized them, leading to his famous maxim regarding the repudiation of femininity as the bedrock of sexuality and civilization. Adding to the mix of what has made psychoanalysis in America less than radical, Aron and Starr argue that the impact of the Holocaust may have fomented the development of a kind manic defense which took the form of ego psychology (with its idea of the autonomous and unassailable ego). What becomes clear is that a tendency towards binary thinking (male/female, autonomous/dependent, permeable/impermeable) within the profession has demanded the repression of certain modes of understanding the psyche.

Aron and Starr suggest that among the most prominently disavowed of ideas is that we are susceptible to the influence of other minds upon our own. In one of the more compelling arguments made, the authors argue that in the center of the split between what is considered psychotherapy and what is considered psychoanalysis, resides one of the biggest and most menacing fissures to the well being of the talking cure in this day and age. If psychotherapy is seen as the province of care and psychoanalysis as the province of interpretation, rather than that the two are frequently blended into many analytic treatments, who (besides big pharma) is the winner in the end? For Aron and Starr, this split is where psychoanalysis American-style, displays an at-times spectacular self-destructiveness.

What is the RX for this dilemma? Listen to the interview and, if you are so moved, write in to describe how you are influenced by what you hear. The authors are game to engage in a conversation about their work and looking forward to hearing from the listenership so that we might strategize together a progressive future for psychoanalysis.

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Bruce Reis and Robert Grossmark, eds., “Heterosexual Masculinities” (Routledge, 2009) Aug 12, 2013

Here at New Books in Psychoanalysis we are celebrating the Summer of Men! We continue our inquiry into the topic of masculinity in psychoanalytic thought as we converse with Robert Grossmark and Bruce Reis about Heterosexual Masculinities: Contemporary Perspectives from Psychoanalytic Gender Theory (Routledge, 2009). The book is devoted to rethinking notions of male heterosexuality from within a psychoanalytic standpoint. Often in the field we think of boys as becoming masculinized by repudiating their identification with their mothers and the female world. This collection of essays begs to differ; boys never give up those identifications and it may be to their benefit that they do not do so.

This collection argues that straight guys have been, in a certain way, fall guys–the ones in which other, more marginalized identities, define themselves in opposition to. So what happens when the known quantity proves to be less knowable? This is some of the terrain taken up by this book. Also discussed here are the pre-oedipal father, as well as the fate of the father’s body and its erotic components, alongside a discussion considering the possibility of the development of interiority and inner genital space in men.

In this interview, the authors explore the paradigm shifts afoot in the field and the ramifications for clinical work that are expectable as a result. The authors exude both seriousness and playfulness as regards their subject matter, making for a perfect August respite (for the analyst on hiatus) and for some pleasurable and moving listening for the rest of us.

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Lawrence R. Samuel, “Shrink: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in America” (Nebraska UP, 2013) Jun 20, 2013

Before the Second World War, very few Americans visited psychologists or psychiatrists. Today, millions and millions of Americans do. How did seeing a “shrink” become, quite suddenly, a typical part of the “American Experience?” In his fascinating book Shrink: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in America (Nebraska University Press, 2013), Lawrence R. Samuel examines the arrival, remarkable growth, and transformation of psychoanalysis in the United States. As Samuel shows, Americans have a kind of love-hate relationship with their “shrinks”: sometimes they love them and sometimes they loath them. The “shrinks” seem to know that their clients are fickle, and so they “re-brand” their technique with some regularity. Sometimes it’s “analysis,” sometimes it’s “therapy,” sometimes it’s just “counseling.” But, regardless of what it’s called, it’s always some variation on the “talking cure” and it can always be traced to Freud.

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Donald Moss, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Man: Psychoanalysis and Masculinity” (Routledge, 2012) Jun 10, 2013

Psychoanalysis, beginning with Freud, has been, albeit perhaps implicitly, a theory of masculinity. Freud’s Oedipus Complex, for example, charts the development of masculine identity in the boy while leaving the girl’s pathway to femininity less fully explicated. And let yourself recall that Freud’s immortal question was not “what do men want” was it? Nevertheless, according to Donald Moss, contemporary psychoanalysis has many glaring blind spots when it comes to thinking about men.

Part of what Moss addresses in this interview is the experience of being a male analyst looking at and listening to men. He argues that this kind of male-male analytic pairing has ended up somehow sidelined and so remains under-thought and under-theorized by analysts. His book is an attempt to open an apparently tightly shut if not hidden door, (think “The Cask of Amontillado”) in the hopes of both shedding light and broadening our conceptual frameworks for thinking about manhood, masculinity and maleness.

Moss draws our attention to some uniquely masculine dilemmas, He argues that on the road to manhood, the boy must pass through the feminizing process of identification. In a sense he is enlarging the popular idea put forth by Greenson, Stoller and Chodorow, each separately, that boys must peel away an initial feminine identification with their mothers in order to become men. Moss argues that to become a man, a man needs a man. “We ‘know’ we are ‘men’,” writes Moss, “when we ‘know’ we are, in some way, fashioning ourselves in the likeness of a predecessor.” This need for a predecessor demands that the boy be receptive and open to the influence of the man he most wishes to resemble. Thus the process of being masculinized demands the boy assume a feminine position. Moss asks us to consider then the impact of internalized homophobia on all men. He wonders if, under the influence of homophobia, many boys defensively turn away from the men they need? And how does this turn away impact the development of a masculine identity? When considering these and other questions, Moss identifies a certain vexatiousness seemingly at the heart of manhood.

Somehow, as well, masculinity is often enough a source of disappointment. We hope it will be an incredible resource, a fount of strength, protectiveness and security yet, given our expectations, it often falls far short. Moss argues that, at some level, we had best get comfortable with that chasm. Following Lacan’s dictate to never give up on your desire, Moss suggests that we see masculinity as a site of aspiration. But we had also best keep in mind that masculinity can take on elements of a Riviereian masquerade, and by doing so, it reveals its feminine aspect once again. Repeatedly in this interview, Moss deftly points out the plethora of paradoxes surrounding masculinity, and in so doing, invites the listener to rethink “common sense” notions of manhood and maleness. Of course, it takes a certain kind of man to expose his own weaknesses–and listening to Moss, the strength and fortitude it takes to do so make for compelling listening–and so with his displays of candor and vulnerability, Moss returns us again to the paradoxical nature of masculinity.

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Christopher Bollas, “Catch Them Before They Fall: The Psychoanalysis of Breakdown” (Routledge, 2013) Mar 26, 2013

What if analysts took steps to keep their analysands out of the hospital when they were beginning to breakdown? What would that look like? In Catch Them Before They Fall: The Psychoanalysis of Breakdown (Routledge, 2013), the eminent psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas, walks us through that process.

Beginning with his treatment of psychotic and manic depressive patients in the 1970s in London, Bollas sought to increase patients psychoanalytic sessions and to work with a team of psychiatrists and social workers who were analytically savvy. When these fragile patients disturbances became heightened, Bollas et co. worked in such a way that none of his patients needed to endure the shock and awe of hospitalization. Now, 40 years later, he has published a book that looks deeply into a way of working that confidently declares psychoanalysis to be THE treatment of choice for the person breaking down. By expanding sessions from five times a week to twice a day seven days a week or from morning to early evening, he discusses with us how breakdowns attended to in this way can become their antithesis: a breakthrough. He is passionate and as always, an intelligent maverick.

This interview promises to give analysts and analysands cause to pause regarding our relationship to the frame and the doing of business as usual. His belief in the human need to find a human other to hear us in our darkest moments, an other especially attuned to unconscious meanings, is convincing. For Bollas, being with a person breaking down demands we change our modus operandi. A breakdown is in a way an opportunity that can be dealt with by psychoanalytic means. To not attend to a breakdown is to put the analysand at risk of simply and devastatingly sealing over the elementary forces that brought the breakdown to the surface in the first place. Always thought provoking, in this interview Bollas weds theory and technique, expanding the reach of psychoanalysis with great creativity.

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Jon Mills, “Conundrums: A Critique of Contemporary Psychoanalysis” (Routledge, 2011) Dec 19, 2012

In this interview, Canadian philosopher, psychologist, and psychoanalyst Jon Mills speaks with us about his book Conundrums: A Critique of Contemporary Psychoanalysiss (Routledge, 2011). In the book he discusses current tenets in North American psychoanalytic thinking and practice that he finds to be concerning and problematic. Focusing on the relational and intersubjective turn currently popular in the field, he articulates what he believes are the faulty ways in which some contemporary analytic thinkers make use of philosophy and, therein, particularly post-modernism. Though relationally influenced himself, in that he is drawn towards a more flexible, less removed approach in the consulting room, he questions the denigration of the drives and what appears to be a seeming disinterest in life before the acquisition of language. Mills wonders about the ways in which ideas associated with post-modernism and the practice of a psychoanalytic hermeneutics have been used to drum thinking about the body out of psychoanalysis and what impact that has on our clinical encounters.

In this interview the discussion ranges from the problem of therapeutic excess via analytic self-disclosure to the fate of the drives in relational and intersubjective thinking to the emphasis on meaning-making, and the role of philosophy in psychoanalysis. Also discussed are psychoanalytic politics, analytic training, and the relational critique of the analyst’s authority. While in this interview Dr. Mills asks some hard questions, particularly of the relational approach, and particularly its philosophical underpinnings, he does so gently and with great seriousness.

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Sandra Buechler, “Still Practicing: The Heartaches and Joys of a Clinical Career” (Routledge, 2012) Aug 25, 2012

In Still Practicing: The Heartaches and Joys of a Clinical Career (Routledge, 2012), Sandra Buechler suggests that shame and loss are key components of a clinical career, and we would be best served to accept their presence and get used to their ongoing tug and pull.

Indeed, clinical training is rife with shame. Buechler reminds us that in training to be a clinician, unlike most other professions, one must investigate one’s defenses, one’s inner conflicts and do so in public. How to mitigate the shame that ensues? She suggests that we can certainly reduce shame about shame. Shame then must be accepted as an ineluctable aspect of the training.

The same with loss: losses of patients, all in good time or out of the blue, also prompt grief reactions and perhaps more shame in the clinician. Shame about shame begets rage, and according to her mentor, Sullivan, anger helps us to cohere in the face of dissolution. She wonders aloud whether shame and loss, suffered in silence, don’t end up prompting us to attack colleagues of different analytic stripes, or within our own ranks so as to shore ourselves up. Are the old battles among analysts a displacement of sorts?

Yet when an analysand leaves us, even if it is a well-planned termination, the experience is unique. No one we know knows the patient and even if we knew people who did we are bound by confidentiality to say nothing. So the analyst carries around unacknowledged and, in a way. unacknowledgeable losses.

Managing these feelings is of interest to Buechler as is the use of writing as a way to transform. Her book is a unique blend of memoir, emotion theory, and a survey of clinical life–and as such, it is in the tradition of new forms of psychoanalytic writing. As an interviewee she was full of clarity and verve and her words will be like salve on a wound for the clinician who is suffering from the slings and arrows, as well as the heartaches and joys, of a clinical career.

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John Burnham, “After Freud Left: A Century of Psychoanalysis in America” (University of Chicago Press, 2012) Jul 31, 2012

Perhaps most of us interested in psychoanalysis in the United States have the idea that, in 1909, when Freud lectured at Clark University, his first and only visit to this country, the profession was launched. That Freud was perhaps an afterthought to a larger celebration at the school may stun us, but truth be told that appears to be the case.

In After Freud Left: A Century of Psychoanalysis in America (University of Chicago Press, 2012)–part of what John Burnham calls “The New Freud Studies”–we encounter scholars looking closely at the way in which American culture interfaced with psychoanalytic thinking. During the mid-twentieth century, for myriad reasons, (the Cold War among them), psychoanalysis was a force to be reckoned with in the States. The book, which includes essays by historians of medicine and of culture, among them Elizabeth Lunbeck, George Makari, Louis Menand, and Dorothy Ross, tells a tale of how psychoanalysis resonated with some of the major thinkers of the time–including Lionel Trilling, Herbert Marcuse, and Norman O. Brown to name but a few.

Given the contemporary context, aka today, in which psychoanalysis is not currying much favor as a mode of treatment or as a system of ideas, looking at the profession in its hey day will give one cause to pause. These historians argue that cultural shifts, among them the advent of psychopharmeceuticals coupled with new ideas about the self that do not consider the unconscious, have placed psychoanalysis on the sidelines.

Dr. Burnham was a pleasure to interview and, as an historian, has been studying all things psychoanalytic since the 1950s. What we love to consider is that he has seen, in his lifetime, many of the changes that the book he has edited chronicles. That he has been writing about psychoanalysis, beginning with the completion of his doctorate in 1958 on the early origins of this profession, only makes this interview more compelling. Something prompted him to take notice then and it is an abiding interest that he has cultivated ever since. We were so pleased to have him with us as a result.

In assembling an illustrious group of historians to write about this topic, Dr. Burnham has done a terrific service to a profession that might well want to reflect on its origins.

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Patricia Gherovici, “Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratization of Transgenderism” (Routledge, 2010) May 21, 2012

In Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratization of Transgenderism (Routledge, 2010), Patricia Gherovici unpacks the ways in which hysteria, Lacanian-style, functions. Approaching her topic, transgenderism, from many angles, she takes us on a whirlwind tour of how the transgender turn is changing clinical thinking and practice. The person who comes into the consulting room with questions about “being in the right body” sheds light on the culture and perhaps especially the culture of psychoanalysis. Arguing against a more traditional Lacanian view that the refusal to accept sexual difference is indicative of a psychotic structure, Gherovici details why she thinks otherwise. She is passionate and informed and true to her training all at once. NBiP senses that she is an unusual psychoanalytic scholar who is exhaustive in her cross-disciplinary research and so brings to us many challenging and provocative questions. Her thinking has strong foundations and her intellectual scaffolding is made of only the finest material. To analysts, anthropologists, activists, queer and feminist theorists, philosophers and historians, Patricia Gherovici has something to say.

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Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips, “Intimacies” (University of Chicago Press, 2008) Mar 19, 2012

In Intimacies and in this interview, Leo Bersani asks “does knowledge of the Other create a foundation for intimacy?” Troubling certain psychoanalytic models that survey the analysand’s past, gathering information about the vicissitudes of childhood, dreams, and other communications, he wonders if intimacy lies elsewhere. Reflecting on Foucault’s understanding of the relationship between knowledge and power, he suggests that intimacy is in trouble unless it is reformulated as a mode of being with, rather than a mode of knowing about. He wonders what might create a new mode of relationality altogether, and as he ponders this, he takes many fascinating detours that further illuminate his thinking. Since the confrontation with difference is what most often prompts violence, and since some schools of psychoanalytic thought place a premium on the ability to recognize the other, he suggests we embrace of a bit more narcissism of an “impersonal” variety. This part of his argument is fascinating and will give many in the field and those who are near it cause to pause.

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Jamieson Webster, “The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis: On Unconscious Desire and its Sublimation” (Karnac Books, 2011) Dec 16, 2011

In this interview, the Lacanian inflected psychoanalyst, Dr. Jamieson Webster, speaks to NBIP about her new publication, The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis: On Unconscious Desire and its Sublimation (Karnac Books, 2011), a text that offers the reader/listener an opportunity to think about the recurrent anxieties that perpetually face this “impossible” profession. Interweaving her training, dreams, and encounters with the thinking of Adorno, Badiou and Lacan, the author troubles the quest for knowledge in the field of psychoanalysis, maybe particularly in its American incarnation Her book’s subtitle, “On Unconscious Desire and its Sublimation” serves as a reminder that the work of the analyst is to spend time with the ineffable, that which is imperiled, just out of reach, that which is to be reached for, perhaps, in the work of a psychoanalytic practice that aims to keep desire in circulation.

Her words will give many cause to pause as she, in a sense, champions the fields perpetual endangerment, seeing in our peril precisely the perfect position for analysis to always occupy. “Psychoanalysis,” writes Webster, “…rests on a precarious ethics that demands one steer clear of any fantasy of closure.” In this statement, we begin to hear her critique of psychoanalytic knowledge and her warm embrace of the unknown. “Knowledge, accumulated in the service of mastery or a unified self-image,” for Webster, “is antithetical to our clinical work, so why not also our theoretical work and teaching?”. A great question and among many that she deftly considers in this interview.

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Muriel Dimen (ed.), “With Culture in Mind: Psychoanalytic Stories” (Routledge, 2011) Sep 12, 2011

What’s culture got to do with psychoanlaysis? According to Muriel Dimen and Stephen Hartman, a whole lot. Dimen, editor of With Culture in Mind: Psychoanalytic Stories (Routledge, 2011), and Hartman, a contributor to the same, note that “culture is always already there.” Therefore culture and the clinic cannot be two separate places but must be, as our guests say, “interimplicated,” or folded together. With their diverse academic backgrounds, Dimen and Hartmen are the perfect pair to explain just how they are so folded and why it matters to psychoanalytic practitioners.

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Steven Poser, “The Misfit” (RosettaBooks, 2011) Aug 31, 2011

While the tragic tale of Marilyn Monroe has been written many times over, her impact on her psychoanalyst, the eminent Ralph Greenson has, until now, been largely unexplored. In The Misfit (RosettaBooks, 2011), Steven Poser tries to understand how Greenson treated Monroe by putting himself in Greenson’s milieu. He attempts to find out what Greenson knew, what he thought, what he felt and how he used it all to help Monroe. What we discover is that Greenson essentially adopted Monroe, creating psychic confusion for a vulnerable woman who lacked a sense of belonging in the first place. Poser details how, in eliding the negative aspects of the transference-countertransference matrix, Greenson lost a patient and lost his own way as a clinician.

In addition to discussing this tragic analytic dyad, Poser also shares his thoughts about psychoanalytic writing and research. He argues that then-current psychoanalytic theory did little to aid Greenson, or to help Greenson treat Monroe. That theory did not allow therapists to use their patients’ hateful feelings toward them to help said patients cohere. This important technique was not developed theoretically until the later twentieth century. Poser reminds us, then, that we are in a sense prisoners of contemporary practice, however flawed it may be.

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Susie Orbach, “Bodies” (Picador, 2009) Aug 15, 2011

“Why is the body the site of so much ongoing, current and growing attention in the West”? asks the feminist psychoanalyst and public intellectual Susie Orbach in her book Bodies (Picador, 2009). In this interview, the groundbreaking author of Fat is a Feminist Issue (inter alia)speaks to New Books in Psychoanalysis about how the body is “no longer a place we live from” but rather a place where the capitalist marketplace has hit a sort of pay dirt. From trendy diets to vaginal recalibration to liposuction, the body is big business. Indeed, as women and men feel a greater and greater need to control their bodies, losing touch with our natural appetites, and attempting to look a certain way, the market that exploits our fears and anxieties is making a fortune.

Meanwhile analysts are more and more likely to encounter patients with a plethora of what Orbach calls “bodily instabilities.” She argues that the profession should take a moment to rethink what is ailing the physically unstable analysand, suggesting that we are not looking at hysterical symptoms, but rather we are seeing bodies that never cohered in the first place. All the pressure on mothers in the past 30 years to police their own desires for food, for rest, for pleasure in the body, has produced a generation of offspring that inherited their caretakers’ sense that the body is not for living in, but rather the body is a project, and an ongoing one. Orbach describes “an internal body” that is often missing in those struggling with anorexia or bulimia or plastic surgeries. In this interview she describes how the analyst can listen to her own body to come to better tune into a pre-verbal and, in fact, a pre-physicalized, pre-body transference.

Orbach is engaging, funny, and willing to step into one of the major social problems of today–living while having never developed bodily coherence.

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Lucy Holmes, “The Internal Triangle: New Theories of Female Development” (Jason Aronson, 2007) Jun 08, 2011

In this interview we revisit the complicated female oedipal constellation, as New Books in Psychoanalysis speaks with Dr. Lucy Holmes about her book The Internal Triangle: New Theories of Female Development (Jason Aronson, 2007).

According to Holmes, the “Internal triangle” is the cornerstone of the female psyche. All of us, male and female, need to separate from our mothers if we are to move beyond narcissistic merger as a way of life. Many theorists see the little boy’s “possession” of a penis as enabling him to see himself as absolutely different from his creator, whereas the little girl often has a harder time. She needs to be like her mother and yet also needs to be different from her in order to mature. According to Holmes, little girls create what she calls an “elegant solution” to the problem of separation by internalizing both mother and father. Yet, Holmes argues, this dual-internalization solution can lead to great problems later in life. Some women feel “both sides” to greatly and become hyper-empathic. Such a woman is in the dark about her own wants and needs and without a clue about how to finesse them. The wants and needs of others rule her world.

Throughout a woman’s life, according to Holmes, women come face to face with their mothers through bodily changes–menstruation, pregnancy, birth, lactation, and menopause paramount among them. Each bodily and developmental encounter provides an opportunity for a woman to refine her relationship to the mother within. How each encounter goes is fateful for a woman. Holmes brings together long separated schools of Modern Analytic thought on the issue of female development, uniting the Drive Theory of Spotnitz and Meadow and the Object Relations Theory of Ormont in order to examine how women distort aggression so as to overshadow themselves, placing the comfort and connection to others above their own well being.

Holmes is engaging, warm, and direct. In many ways one senses she has worked through for herself the three sides of the internal triangle and has, therefore, integrated her life as a woman, an analyst, a scholar, a teacher, and a mother and wife.

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Sheldon Bach, “The How-to Book for Students of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy” (Karnac Books, 2011) May 13, 2011

Who knew there could be a “how to” book regarding the “impossible profession”? Well, Sheldon Bach has written one. In The How-to Book for Students of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (Karnac Books, 2011), Bach speaks plainly and with warmth about the many difficulties facing new clinicians ranging from setting and collecting fees to dealing with the sadomasochistic transference/countertransference matrix. Bach is funny, opinionated, and ready to roll with the absurd. In this interview he gently dismantles many sacred ideas in the field and offers clinicians, whether seasoned or fledgling, a way to work that brings one back to the basics, to the transference, to the unconscious, and to the power of psychoanalysis as a useful technique for treating all forms of human suffering, including the psychoses and manias too commonly abandoned to medication.

He is a beloved teacher; indeed, this book grew out of his students’ needs for clinical savoir faire and is, as he tells us, a collection of emailed nuggets and short reactions. In essence, these are his written responses to students’ requests for how to deal with clinical conundrums. Alas, when asked how he deals with patients who do not pay him, forgetting their checkbooks and so forth, he said he never had to deal with such problems. As a clinician, I’m eager to find out how he avoids them.

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Neil Altman, “The Analyst in the Inner City: Race, Class, and Culture Through an Analytic Lens” (Routledge, 2009) Apr 10, 2011

In his book The Analyst in the Inner City: Race, Class, and Culture Through an Analytic Lens (Routledge, 2009), the well-respected psychoanalyst Dr. Neil Altman explores what happens when one practices analysis outside the private practice frame and, instead, among the urban poor. Drawing on years of experience helping underprivileged groups, Altman discusses the impact of poverty on the analyst and patient alike, delineating what he calls the social “third” and its role in the treatment, all the while suggesting that clinicians must encounter and reckon with their own inevitable unconscious predispositions concerning “others.”

In this interview, we hear an analyst think through the social with an eye towards the unconscious. Altman argues that psychoanalysis, by being in some ways elitist, especially when it has allied itself with the medical profession, has engendered considerable hostility in many quarters. He urges us to begin to address and take seriously critiques of our profession so that we might have a larger impact on the world at large. Altman says analysts are positioned to hear the other side of the hegemonic message, yet too often turn a deaf ear. Altman urges us to listen, and thereby make psychoanalysis politically relevant.

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Irwin Hirsch, “Coasting in the Countertransference: Conflicts of Self-Interest between Analyst and Patient” (Routledge, 2008) Mar 18, 2011

This interview should be of interest to both a professional and lay audience. What analysand has not wondered to herself whether she just represents a paycheck in her analyst’s world?And what analyst has not kept a patient in treatment long after the analysis was brought to completion due to financial concerns?

In his book Coasting in the Countertransference: Conflicts of Self-Interest between Analyst and Patient (Routledge, 2008), Dr. Hirsch explores how analysts can coast in a treatment, indulging patients and themselves via preferred modes of relating that leave the patient’s problems, usually thorny problems, untouched. As analysts who share interests with our patients–be it the Mets, the pork chop at The Little Owl, or Jonathan Franzen’s latest–we may find that we engage them in certain ways so as to keep other issues, such as their sadism, their capacity to demean, or their dependency needs, at bay. Our fears, as analysts, may prevent us from addressing pressing issues with our patients–and so we consciously coast away from, as the now-deceased group analyst Lou Ormont used to say, “the sound of the cannons.”

And as we ended our fifty-minute hour, Dr. Hirsch helped this interviewer realize that there was an aspect of the book that she did not want to attend to, namely the analyst’s own character structure. Dr. Hirsch raised my awareness of my own capacity to coast.I suppose that is why he wrote this fine book.

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Hendrika Freud, “Electra vs Oedipus: The Drama of the Mother-Daughter Relationship” (Routledge, 2010) Feb 27, 2011

Who doesn’t want to know what women want, right? Well, in this interview with Hendrika Freud, we begin to get the idea that women often prefer not to know. As I sit in my private practice, many of my female patients put on a good smoke and mirror show, cloaking desires behind reaction formations, saying they are not angry when indeed they are, and feeling guilty when they venture to articulate what they prefer in bed, for breakfast, or as payment for services rendered. Indeed, when a woman says “no” she does often mean “yes.” In her book Electra vs Oedipus: The Drama of the Mother-Daughter Relationship (Routledge, 2010), Freud explores why being affirmative, embracing one’s desires, can be so vexatious for those deemed female.

Finding a way to separate from the one whose gender identity we share, our mother, is a very complicated affair. According to Freud, a mother’s unconscious fantasies regarding her daughter are transmitted at a very young age. If a mother is narcissistically vulnerable, she is more prone to use her daughter as an extension of herself and so to be threatened by her daughter’s expressions of difference. If you have seen Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” you have witnessed an excellent depiction of how destructive such a set up is for the daughter, leading at its most extreme to florid psychosis.

So what do women want? According to Hendrika Freud, “they want a woman with a penis.”

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