New Books in Psychoanalysis

Buddhism and psychotherapy have been in conversation since the days of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Erich Fromm. Today, when practices drawn from Buddhism have entered the mainstream, that conversation continues in multiple dimensions. In Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Ira Helderman looks at the ways psychotherapists, some of them also active as leaders of Dharma communities, have engaged Buddhism, both as individuals and in their approach to their psychotherapeutic practice. He relies on his own research, interviews with therapists, and fieldwork in a field that continues to take new forms.Jack Petranker is the founder of Founder, Center for Creative Inquiry and Full Presence Mindfulness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

What happens when a Kleinian and Lacanian have a committed, generous, and accessible conversation about the commonalities and differences between their psychoanalytic perspectives? In this special, two-part interview, host Jordan Osserman joins authors Amy Allen, a prominent representative of Frankfurt School critical theory with expertise on Klein, and Mari Ruti, a leading Lacanian critical theorist, to discuss their new book, Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan: A Dialogue (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). In part one, posted on 16th September, we explored the overall structure of the book and the process of writing it, then entered into a conversation on the topic of the ego in Klein and Lacan. In this part, we delve deeper into the knotty areas of the book, including Allen’s understanding of intrapsychic versus intersubjective phenomena in Klein, Ruti’s distinction between circumstantial and constitutive trauma in Lacan, and the challenges involved in balancing psychoanalytic universalism with a Foucauldian commitment to context and contingency.Jordan Osserman grew up in South Florida and currently calls London home. He received his PhD in gender studies and psychoanalysis from University College London, his MA in psychosocial studies from Birkbeck College, and his BA in women's and gender studies from Dartmouth College. His published work 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

"Psychotherapy, in my experience, feels nothing like a paper about psychotherapy."In his honest, witty and at times deeply moving account of his graduate training in New York City, Valery Hazanov gives us the unique opportunity of joining a therapist at the beginning of his career. The Fear of Doing Nothing: Notes of a Young Therapist (Sphinx, 2019) raises a number of provocative questions about the efficacy of psychotherapy, the essence of the process and the experience of being in a therapeutic relationship. Through ten chapters we are confronted with the confusion and dissonance between theory and practice that every clinician has to face in his work with patients. We get to share in Valery’s work with patients in a variety of setting. There is individual therapy, as well as couples therapy, group therapy and an intense tour de force through a day in the community clinic. The text is remarkable in its intimacy with the subject, the therapeutic dyad. We follow closely not only the development of the patients, but also Valery’s professional and personal development, which in our field are too closely connected to be seen as seperate entities anyway. Without touching on the subject explicitly, the book asks even deeper questions through its form. What are we doing as a discipline that is supposedly concerned with human subjectivity when we write about clinical encounters in a seemingly objective fashion? And what is psychoanalytic writing anyway?In the interview we touch on these topics as well as the connection of psychotherapy and politics, the literary quality of the book and question of eclecticism, among many others.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

What happens when a Kleinian and Lacanian have a committed, generous, and accessible conversation about the commonalities and differences between their psychoanalytic perspectives? In this special, two-part interview, host Jordan Osserman joins authors Amy Allen, a prominent representative of Frankfurt School critical theory with expertise on Klein, and Mari Ruti, a leading Lacanian critical theorist, to discuss their new book, Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan: A Dialogue (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). The format of the book is innovative in its own right: the two thinkers set aside a week to meet in person everyday and record themselves discussing, free-form, a variety of themes pertaining to their research interests, including subjectivity, affect, love, creativity, and politics. They then edited the content of these conversations into this fascinating work, which maintains the format of a dialogue. In this podcast, we try to recapture something of the spirit of the book, allowing Ruti and Allen to explore the ways they see the work of Klein and Lacan intersect and diverge, and how they put these theorists to work in their own fields.After the first episode, we felt that the conversation was so rich — and there was so much more left to say — that we decided to record another one. Among other topics, this first part explores the process of writing this unique book, how Ruti and Allen came to realise that Lacan’s critique of ego psychology need not be opposed to Klein’s understanding of ego integration, and how both authors’ focus on critical theory relates to the clinic. In part two, we will delve deeper into the knotty areas of the book, including Allen’s understanding of intrapsychic versus intersubjective phenomena in Klein, Ruti’s distinction between circumstantial and constitutive trauma in Lacan, and the challenges involved in balancing psychoanalytic universalism with a Foucauldian commitment to context and contingency.Jordan Osserman grew up in South Florida and currently calls London home. He received his PhD in gender studies and psychoanalysis from University College London, his MA in psychosocial studies from Birkbeck College, and his BA in womens and gender studies from Dartmouth College. His published work 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

Elizabeth Danto and Alexandra Steiner-Strauss’ edited book, Freud/Tiffany: Anna Freud, Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham and The Best Possible School (Routledge, 2018), stands to alter what has become practically an idee fixe about Anna Freud.  Whereas she can seem to exist only in a dyad with her father, she comes to life in this collection, outside of his purview.  We meet the wealthy Dorothy Tiffany (as in stained glass) Burlingham from NYC who settles in Vienna with her children, fleeing a hard marriage, seeking analytic treatment for herself and her family.  In short order, Anna Freud becomes the most important person in her life.  Anna returns Dorothy’s affections and together they embark on many marvelous and groundbreaking psychoanalytic projects.They create the Hietzing School in Red Vienna wherein the seeds for some of the most important psychoanalytic theorizing about children and adolescents are planted.  Anna analyzes Dorothy’s son.  Sigmund Freud analyzes Dorothy who he accepts as a daughter-in-law.  Together these two women form an over 40 year love and professional relationship that included buying a country cottage for weekend sojourns away from it all to creating the Hampstead war nurseries.  Anna helped raise Dorothy’s three kids and Dorothy trained to become an analyst.  Thanks to the wonderful essays in this book, Anna Freud begins to take a new and exciting shape.The book reads like a psychoanalytic who’s who: Erik Erikson, Peter Blos, August Aichorn are all on the scene teaching and advising at Heitzing.  Almost all the students have analytic sessions.  The Dewey method is applied.  We meet Blos before he decides to enter analysis, having fallen into this position.  We meet Erikson before he left his career as an artist to pursue analysis as well.This collection tells the story of a school, the lives it impacted, the intellectual and clinical legacy it generated, but most especially it highlights the libidinous legacy of Freud and Burlingham, who, in finding and loving each other, created new modes of research, innovative forms of clinical education and a variety of radical institutions that have forever changed the way we understand the lives of children.  And I have not even mentioned all the gorgeous photographs sprinkled throughout the text.Tracy D. Morgan is the founding editor and host of NBIP, a psychoanalyst in practice in NYC trained also as a historian, she writes about many things. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

Lacan published his Écrits in 1966, a compilation of his written work up to that middle period in his teaching. Notoriously difficult to read, the editors of the book we’re discussing today describe the Écrits as “an unwieldy, conglomerate ‘urtext’ … not a book at all … but ‘the waste’ of his teaching: elements he didn’t discuss in public … and sensitive points to which his audience would have reacted with reluctance.” It wasn’t until 2007 that, thanks to work of translator Bruce Fink, the complete edition of the Écrits were finally published in English. Now, Stijn Vanheule, Derek Hook and Calum Neill have brought us the three volume work, Reading Lacan’s Écrits (Routledge, 2018), which features world renowned Lacanian scholars and clinicians explicating in detailed paragraph-by-paragraph commentary each of the essays in the Écrits. Thanks to this publication, coming to grips with the Écrits in all its complexity has suddenly become possible. Lacan’s cryptic pronouncements are miraculously, lucidly reformulated, revealing them in their original and enlightening contributions to the practice and theory of psychoanalysis. What was involved in putting together this monumental and challenging work of exegesis? What does it say about the Lacanian tradition today — in all its differing styles, emphases and factions? Join us in conversation with Derek, Calum and Stijn as we explore this and more.Jordan Osserman grew up in South Florida and currently calls London home. He received his PhD in gender studies and psychoanalysis from University College London, his MA in psychosocial studies from Birkbeck College, and his BA in womens and gender studies from Dartmouth College. His published work 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

Composer, philosopher, scientist, psychoanalyst-Emmanuel ("Manny") Ghent was all of these and more. In this comprehensive interview with the editors, Adrienne Harris and Victoria Demos of the new book Heart Melts Forward: The Collected Writings of Emmanuel Ghent (Routledge, 2018) we discuss the seminal theoretical ideas Manny was passionate about and their impact on relational thinking.Manny Ghent has a firm place in the relational/psychoanalytic lineage. He was an analysand of Clara Thompson, who one of the founding members of the interpersonal school, and herself an analysand of Sandor Ferenczi. Manny Ghent had a profound effect on the first generation of interpersonal relational writers including Stephen Mitchell, Muriel Dimen, and Jessica Benjamin. Heart Melts Forward is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the relational school of thought. In addition to being a psychoanalyst, Manny Ghent was a well-regarded composer and pioneer in electronic music. Here is a link to one of his better known works, Phosphones: https://vimeo.com/113807053You can reach Christopher Bandini at @cebandini. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

Giuseppe Civitarese's An Apocryphal Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2019) is a book of transpositions, collecting together the author’s clinical vignettes, enigmatic objects, stray thoughts, projects, images, notes from readings, and musings; but also remarks on films and exhibitions, memories, episodes from daily life, summaries of papers to write, questions, doubts and obsessions—all of which have shaped the author’s understanding of psychoanalysis.Born from moments in which the author has sensed a solution for problems encountered in daily practice or for obscure but exciting points of theory, the entries are ordered in an apocryphal manner, offering a personal and challenging view of psychoanalysis. Like small epiphanies in which there is always an emotion—be it that of amusement, astonishment, gratitude, sadness, joy—they express the style of the analyst and of the person in treating mental suffering and give a glimpse into the imaginary which nurtures it. Ideas for psychoanalysis are outlined where at center stage is the ability to wait, to be surprised; to operate from the place of the unconscious, which by definition is a place of negativity, and to exercise a form of soft skepticism—ultimately, a mode of hospitality.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

In Transformational Processes in Clinical Psychoanalysis: Dreaming, Emotions and the Present Moment (Routledge, 2019), Lawrence J. Brown offers a contemporary perspective on how the mind transforms, and gives meaning to, emotional experience that arises unconsciously in the here-and-now of the clinical hour. Brown surveys the developments in theory and practice that follow from Freud’s original observations and traces this evolution from its conception to contemporary analytic field theory.Brown cast a wide theoretical net in his exploration of these transformational processes and builds on the contributions of Freud, Theodor Reik, Bion, Ogden, the Barangers, Cassorla, Civitarese and Ferro. Bion’s theories of alpha function, transformations, dreaming and his clinical emphasis on the present moment are foundation to this book. Brown’s writing is clear and aims to describe the various theoretical ideas as plainly as possible. Detailed clinical material is given in most chapters to illustrate the theoretical perspectives. Brown applies this theory to transformational processes to a variety of topics, including the analyst’s receptivity, countertransference as transformation, the analytic setting, the paintings of J.M.W. Turn, “autistic transformation” and other clinical situations in the analysis of children and adults.Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist with a private practice in Los Angeles. He is candidate at The Psychoanalytic Center of California. 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

If I could vote for my favorite new psychoanalytic book of the 21st century, Ellen Pinsky's Death and Fallibility in the Psychoanalytic Encounter: Mortal Gifts (Routledge, 2017) would be it.But to be clear, this is actually a set of essays and definitely not a collection of articles: it is full of style. The author marries two blind spots in the field and creates a conversation between them. The result of this union yields a reflective rejoinder to popular psychoanalytic preoccupations old and new, chief among them, enactments, neutrality, analytic subjectivity, and abstinence.These essays also return sex and death to the heart of the psychoanalytic endeavor while reminding the reader that technique and ethics are one and the same.Pinsky sets out to explore the field’s overall silence regarding the mortality of the analyst and his sexual transgressions in the consulting room.  She asks, what happens to the patient when the analysis is brought to a sudden end, by death or violation of the frame?She argues that the turning of a blind eye to these two conceptually interrelated “events” is rooted in a deeper refusal to wrestle with the demands of analytic work and the analyst's fallibility.  (I could make an argument that this is also largely a book about men in the field but that would be a separate essay.)Our consulting rooms are, ideally, transference hothouses.  How can the analyst survive the rigors of a setting that demands he listen, feel and absorb multiple transferences, and perhaps most especially the demand for love and gratification, without acting?  What, if any, possible preparation can safeguard analysts and analytic treatments from demise?  How does the analyst endure not mattering day in and day out, because if we are honest, we know the transference is not about who we actually are? Have we fallen prey to a narrative that sees the analyst as being like a God, beyond death, asks Pinsky, so as to protect the analyst from the truth of his human imperfectability, and to compensate for his deprivations?If we are abstinent, she argues, desire grows, and if we are neutral, the patient wants to say more.  Desire and freedom flourish in this fertile surround.  Should the transference flower, and wildly so, on the uptick, ghosts become ancestors. However, should the analyst feel indomitable, beyond supervision, (an American conceit for sure) he can lose the proverbial thread, thinking of himself as an exception, beyond death or analytic responsibility.  He may believe the love emanating from the patient to be about his person and feel compelled to act or, he is driven to retaliate because he knows he is irrelevant yet must suffer verbal slings and arrows.  Either which, the patient, giving the analyst her all, may concomitantly find her wishes for love gratified, yet her analysis annihilated.Perhaps it would be better if her analyst had died without a warning? And many an analyst dies without giving any warning, leaving patients scattered hither and yon.  How, asks Pinsky, do we tell a patient that things must come to an unwelcome end?  What does the patient lose when the analyst dies anyway?  What is the fate of the transference when the conditions that house it are destroyed, either by death or transgression?Tracy Morgan is the founding editor of New Books in Psychoanalysis and a psychoanalyst, working in NY, NY and Rome, Italy.  She can be reached at tracedoris@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis