New Books in Psychoanalysis

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

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

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

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

Gavin Arnall, an Assistant Professor in Romance Languages and Literature at the University of Michigan, discusses his book, Subterranean Fanon, revealing two contrasting interpretations of Frantz Fanon's theories of change. He examines how Fanon’s duality offers insights into radical transformation, especially in light of contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter. Arnall emphasizes the need for a nuanced understanding of Fanon's integration of psychoanalysis and social change, highlighting his method of 'social therapy' in addressing issues of colonialism and systemic injustice.

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

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

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

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

M. Fakhry Davids, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, dives deep into the concept of internal racism, highlighting its presence within all of us. He discusses how internalized biases emerged during his experience in apartheid South Africa, emphasizing the importance of addressing these issues openly. Davids argues that by acknowledging our internal racist organization, we can foster more honest conversations about race. The implications on identity formation, particularly among children, and the need for psychoanalysis to tackle these deep-seated issues are explored.