New Books in Psychoanalysis

Latest Episodes:

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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).

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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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