New Books in 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

Since the classical Freudian and ego psychology paradigms lost their position of dominance in the late 1950’s, psychoanalysis became a multi-paradigm science with those working in the different frameworks increasingly engaging only with those in the same or related intellectual “silos.” Beginning with Freud’s theory of human nature and civilization, Psychoanalytic Thinking: A Dialectical Critique of Contemporary Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2018) proceeds to review and critically evaluate a series of post-Freudian contributions to psychoanalytic thought.Out of dialogue and mutual critique, psychoanalysis can separate the wheat from the chaff, collect the wheat and approach an ever-evolving synthesis. This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists and, more broadly, to readers in philosophy, social science and critical social theory.Donald Carveth is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Social and Political Thought and a Senior Scholar at York University, Toronto, Canada and a Training and Supervising Analyst in the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis. He is past Director of the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis and a past Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis/Revue canadienne de psychanalyse.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

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contribute to this process? This podcast addresses this issue. We interview Professor Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, whose book, The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance (forthcoming with MIT Press) is undergoing a Massive Online Peer-Review (MOPR) process, where everyone can make comments on his manuscript. Additionally, his book will be Open Access (OA) since the date of publication. We discuss with him how do MOPR and OA work, how he managed to combine both of them and how these initiatives can contribute to the democratization of knowledge.You can participate in the MOPR process of The Good Drone through this link: https://thegooddrone.pubpub.org/Felipe G. Santos is a PhD candidate at the Central European University. His research is focused on how activists care for each other and how care practices within social movements mobilize and radicalize heavily aggrieved collectives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

How can insights from psychoanalysis help us understand digital culture? in Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture: Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data (Routledge, 2018), Jacob Johanssen, a senior lecturer in the University of Westminster's School of Media and Communication, draws on the work of Freud and Anzieu to explore both traditional and new forms of media. The book uses research projects on the Embarrassing Bodies television show, and on digital labour, to show how psychoanalysis can inform research methods and explain how people engage with TV, use Twitter, and present themselves online. Moreover, the book grapples with the rise of big data, offering new perspectives on content providers such as Netflix. Packed with rich analysis and a wealth of examples, the book will be essential reading across cultural and media studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

With Paris as the organizing locus of his new book, Du moyen âge à nos jours, expériences et représentations de la folie à Paris [From the Middle Ages to Today, Experiences and Representations of Madness in Paris], Benoît Majerus uses an impressively wide range of visual sources, from religious images and architectural photographs to neuroleptic advertisements and administrative maps. These images are integrated into the text and function not only as illustrations, but also as images with their own story to tell.  Majerus’ narrative arc follows the twists and turns of madness in a city long associated with mental pathogens and their cures and reveals how the history of psychiatry can be told differently through the lens of visual culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century (Verso, 2017) introduce readers to important work in Anglophone cultural studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, media theory, speculative realism, science studies, Italian and French workerist and autonomist thought, two “imaginative readings of Marx,” and two “unique takes on the body politic.” There are significant implications of these ideas for how we live and work at the contemporary university, and we discussed some of those in our conversation. This is a great book to read and to teach with! Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis