New Books in Psychoanalysis Anna Fishzon, "The Impossible Return - Psychoanalytic Reflections on Breast Cancer, Loss, and Mourning" (Routledge, 2025)
Jan 20, 2026
In this engaging discussion, Anna Fishzon, a psychoanalytic clinician and author, delves into her new book, intertwining personal experiences with breast cancer, mourning, and identity. She explores how a reconstructed breast symbolizes uncanny loss and presence. Fishzon also examines the gaps in psychoanalytic literature around cancer existentialism, shame, and maternal relations. Drawing connections to Soviet history, opera, and nonlinear time, she offers profound insights into the complexities of survivorship and the relentless process of mourning.
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Writing From Personal Cancer Experience
- Anna Fishzon wrote the book after her 2017 breast cancer diagnosis because existing literature didn't capture her experience.
- She aimed to combine memoir, psychoanalytic reflection, and attention to reconstruction and mourning.
Recordings, Reconstruction, And The Uncanny
- Fishzon links reconstructed breasts and recorded voices as copies that stand in for lost objects in Lacanian terms.
- Opera and recordings become a framework to explore originality, duplication, and the uncanny in embodiment.
Motherhood Deepens The Loss
- Fishzon describes being a mother as deepening the breast's significance because it both nourished and gave pleasure.
- Losing a breast felt like losing a person and returned in waves like mourning a loved one.
