New Books In Psychoanalysis

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',

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 situat

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Vi

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

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

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 identit

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 gro

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 cli

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

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 th

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 impac

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

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 em

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.” 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newb

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 psychothera

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 dam

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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

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, kn

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. Lea

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,