Neil Vickers, a Professor of English literature at King's College London, and Derek Bolton discuss their compelling book on the complex interplay of illness and social relationships. They explore how serious illness alters perceptions and dependencies in our relationships, highlighting feelings of isolation experienced by both the ill and their caregivers. Their interdisciplinary approach emphasizes the importance of community support and connectedness in fostering resilience. They also examine the concept of 'holding' in caregiving, advocating for empathy in the context of illness.

Naomi Seidman, the Chancellor Jackman Professor of the Arts at the University of Toronto and winner of the National Jewish Book Award, dives into the exploration of Freud's Jewish identity. She discusses the intriguing phenomenon of scholars seeking to uncover Freud's concealed Jewishness through translations into Hebrew and Yiddish. Seidman critiques traditional views, emphasizing Freud’s authentic connections to his heritage. The conversation also touches on the role of Jewish languages in shaping identity and cultural expression, linking these themes to contemporary socio-political discussions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donald Moss, an author renowned for his innovative perspectives in psychoanalysis, challenges conventional thinking with his disruptive ideas. He critiques the comfort of common sense, unveiling the complexities of sincerity and theory in understanding truth. Moss shares gripping personal experiences, including a confrontation with a violent patient, delving into how trauma informs identity. The conversation also explores the interplay of emotion, sexuality, and societal norms within psychoanalysis, urging listeners to embrace uncertainty and rethink boundaries.

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