New Books in Psychoanalysis

Germans belonging to the generation born at the turn of the twentieth century endured staggering losses, many of which became difficult to mourn or even acknowledge: their parents in World War I, financial and physical security during the Weimar Republic, the racially pure utopian promise of the Third Reich, and likely several loved ones in the catastrophic final throes of World War II and the privation of the immediate postwar period. Thomas Kohut, in his provocative and moving book, A German Generation: An Experiential History of the Twentieth Century (Yale University Press, 2012), argues that the Weimar-youth generation’s inability to work through these losses informed its members’ particular brand of anti-Semitism, enabling them to look away from the Holocaust and leading them to seek comfort in the collective, the Volksgemeinschaft – initially in the Youth Movement, then the Reich Work Service, and finally the Free German Circle in their twilight years. The turn to the collective not only compensated for loss but also impeded empathy for the plight of Jewish neighbors and engendered chronic optimism and psychic fragility. Through an analysis of sixty-two oral history interviews condensed into six composites, Kohut argues for the importance of empathy (defined as thinking one’s way into the experience of another) for both history and the consulting room. Empathy facilitates reparative mourning and guilt while its absence — as affect, social practice, and critical category – can have devastating, indeed genocidal, consequences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

Putting Freud’s books — not the man but the writings — on the couch, listening closely for the breaks, the retractions, the internal conflicts, the sudden about-faces. John Fletcher, professor of English literature, reads Freud very, very closely. When we view Freud’s work as an unfolding process, the main themes are often not even what Freud himself conceptualized. In Freud and the Scene of Trauma (Fordham University Press, 2013), Fletcher traces how Freud’s thought — including on trauma, seduction, memory, the transference, child development, the death drive — is pulled toward two wildly opposed positions simultaneously: a de-centering of human subjectivity, where the other person with a sexuality and an unconscious acts on us to form the basis of psychical life; and a recoiling, re-centering of the idea of the individual, now seen as sui genris, formed entirely from the inside out. This movement between these two poles is meticulously followed as Freud’s ideas oscillate — often from paragraph to paragraph. The entire spectacle is seen as a sort of enactment of a psychoanalytic conflict where a reaction to the too-muchness of the other is the basis of our formation. 25 lectures from Fletcher’s undergraduate course, which can act as a sort of introduction to his book, 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

Exploring everything from the impact of her own psychoanalysis on her mode and mien to the effect of consumer culture on the psyche, the delightful Mari Ruti keeps the ball rolling.  We pondered with her so many things that the interview feels like xmas morning! Traversing the advent of self-help books, Lacan, the Frankfurt School, the super ego, the repetition compulsion, hegemony, trauma, love and more, there is seemingly no topic germane to psychoanalysis and daily life that Ruti shies away from. In The Call of Character: Living a Life Worth Living (Columbia University Press, 2013)–a book akin in spirit to McDougall’s Plea for a Measure of Abnormality albeit without the case studies–Ruti argues that a bit of madness is an agreeable thing. Loving one’s symptom lessens its impact for sure. As such, Ruti embraces Lacan rather fully as she argues for the ways in which desire can produce forms of human subjectivity that don’t reproduce the normative. By helping us to identify what lures us away from listening more carefully to the “call” of our own “characters”, Ruti plots a course to live a life worth living. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

Elizabeth Lunbeck has made a major contribution to the historical study of psychoanalysis with the publication of The Americanization of Narcissism (Harvard University Press, 2014). Exploring the concept of narcissism and how it is deployed at the level of culture, she has produced a multi-textured book that is one part history of ideas, one part history of psychoanalysis and one part cultural history.  The admixture yields a good read and, in this interview, Lunbeck reveals herself to be quick on her feet and sturdy in her thinking in all three realms.  It was easy to imagine being in one of the history classes she teaches at Vanderbilt, perched on the edge of the seat, endeavoring to keep apace of a mind that is comfortable with small details and large concepts all at once. She argues that at mid-century, critics of American culture, including the man who hired her for her first teaching job at University of Rochester, Christopher Lasch, made much of the idea that narcissism was ruining the American character.  Lunbeck questions his understanding of narcissism–wherein a person is soft, weak, needy and seeking salvation through consumerism–and the book unfolds from there.  Relying largely on the thinking of the psychoanalysts, Otto Kernberg and Heinz Kohut, who both wrote volumes about narcissistic personalities and their treatment, we come to see that just as the culture critics were using the idea of narcissism to make their point, psychoanalysts were in deep discussion as to how to treat and understand the narcissists that lay on their couches. Lunbeck sets out to explore key concepts in the history of this term and offers up chapters on “self-love”, “independence”, “vanity”, “gratification”, “inaccessibility”, and “identity.”  Each term reveals something about the interaction between culture and psychoanalysis, and as such each chapter offers a particular prism through which to think more fully about narcissism and the many shapes it has taken.  Questions emerge: Are narcissists grandiose individuals who need no one?  Are people who reject dependency truly strong?  Were people who lacked good feelings about themselves and so used others to get “the narcissistic supplies” in need of tough love or of gratification on the couch?  Is the quest for pleasure the end of the social contract? In this interview these and other topics are covered, leaving one with the lasting impression that the idea of narcissism has served many purposes both within the culture and within the profession of psychoanalysis.  Mining this quite malleable concept, Lunbeck may have given it a proper container, a way in which it can, at last, take a clearer shape. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

Join us for a maximum dopamine experience as Dr. Claudia Luiz discusses the making of her book Where’s My Sanity? Stories That Help, an everyman’s tour de force that’s poised to create a seismic shift in the cultural consciousness.  Psychoanalysis has been as yet unsuccessful in seducing the gentry that lying on the couch is where the action is.  Dr. Luiz’s mission is to help people understand that it’s emotional experiences that create change vs. short-term prescriptive steps (12 of them or otherwise).  To this end she is a psychoanalytic ambassador of sorts. During this interview, Dr. Luiz first describes her process of writing the book – a process she likens to artistry and an attempt to strike the right ‘note’ between herself as author and reader as audience (Luiz’ parents are both analysts and former music virtuosi).  She undergoes a learning process with a non-analyst producer who helps her understand how an audience engages with media.  She learns that the book must be pleasurable in order to deliver optimum dopamine to be engaging. This leads to natural associations to the psychoanalytic process.  And she learns that what the audience craves is an analyst who will reveal herself. When it comes to being an analyst, there’s no such thing as being invisible anyway. Dr. Luiz has given a lot of thought to the analyst’s presence, digital or otherwise.  She believes what the patient needs is an analyst comfortable with her presence and her emotions – whether they’re on Linked In, Facebook, Twitter or they’re affecting optimum analytic neutrality (which according to Luiz, doesn’t exist). When it comes to discussing the general public’s lack of zeal for psychoanalysis, Luiz believes we have a definite P.R. problem. What we need to do is sell psychoanalysis in a way that is sexy. After all, what could be more sexy then someone who will listen to you, really understand you, be there for you no matter what and when hearing about your most negative and distasteful parts will want to know more and more? Psychoanalysis is sexy indeed.  Claudia Luiz believes if we can sell the meta-theory to the right party, we might have a chance.   Oprah, are you listening? But besides the perils, pitfalls and hoped-for resurrection of the talking cure, Luiz gets into the technique (meat and potatoes) of working analytically with children, teens, parents and married adults.  It’s a stimulating interview with one of Modern Psychoanalysis’ foremost practitioners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

For those who are savvy about all things psychoanalytic, be they analysts, analysands, or fellow travelers, the existence, presence, work, writing, and imprimatur of Adam Phillips is given long, as opposed to short, shrift. It is safe to say that his voice is singular in its mellifluousness and its range. I first encountered his writing at one of my dearest friend’s, and any second now new NBiP host and psychoanalyst Anne Wennerstrand’s wedding. Her husband, (doyen of the world of choreography), Doug Elkins, insisted I read a snippet from Phillip’s book, On Monogamy, before they slipped on their rings. This request placed the thinking of Phillips squarely into my casually bridesmaided lap. That Elkins, a dancer with what we then called “downtown” street credibility knew from Adam Phillips perhaps 15 years ago says something; and it says something about Phillips and his reach. In Phillips’ most recent book, Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst (Yale UP, 2014), we encounter the biography of a man who thought the entire genre of biography was nothing but bunk. And yet, in this biography of Freud we also encounter a writer who seeks to show respect for Freud’s dis-ease if not utter disrespect for the attempt to write the story of his life. As such, the book illustrates Phillips’ clinical acumen as much as his mind, his writing mien, and the life of his subject. Demonstrating great caution, going up to the lip of certain facts without speculating unduly, like a savvy but sensitive psychoanalyst, Phillips offers the world a book that, like a true tree of life, grows in many directions at once. As no doubt it will be read by people unfamiliar with “the talking cure” it carries a heavy burden in a day and age that prefers writing/texting/emailing to talking a deux, forget entering into an analysis! Embedded within the text we find a vast exploration of the difference between “telling one’s story” (on Oprah or in a blog as is de rigeur in the culture of confession du moment) and speaking in the analytic dyad. Ultimately, as compared with what real truths might be uttered in a psychoanalysis, indeed the facts of biography look paltry. And furthermore, as this is a book that plays hardball with commonplace conceptions of knowledge, data, and truth, as compared with the exploration of unruly desire and its vicissitudes, we find ourselves returned to Freud who told us that the truths we create for the public work well to hide the real thing, the kinds of archaic truths spoken solely within the confines of a psychoanalytic setting. Phillips brings back the primacy of the sexual to Freud, and hence to psychoanalysis. Bring on the alleluia chorus and enjoy the interview!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

It may seem silly to ask why we seek ecstasy. We seek it, of course, because it’s ECSTASY. We are evolved to want it. It’s our brain’s way of saying “Do this again and as often as possible.” But there’s more to it than that. For one thing, there are many ways to get to ecstasy, and some of them are very harmful: cutting, starving, and, of course, drug-taking. These things may render an ecstatic state, but they will also kill you. Moreover, many of the ecstasy-inducing activities and substances are powerfully addictive. It’s fine, for example, for most people to use alcohol to feel more relaxed or even to achieve an ecstatic state. But something on the order of 10% to 15% of people cannot safely use alcohol at all without become seriously addicted. And once they do, they usually descend into a profoundly un-ecstatic nightmare that often ends in death. According to Sharon K. Farber‘s Hungry for Ecstasy: Trauma, the Brain, and the Influence of the Sixties (Aronson, 2013), our desire for ecstasy is first and foremost a psychic defense that protects us against on-going or anticipated trauma. When reality (as we perceive it, which, of course, is not always or even often accurately) becomes “too much” for us, we seek refuge in altered states of consciousness. The most attractive of these, of course, is ecstasy. It makes everything frightening just “go away.” Sometimes, the ecstatic state appears spontaneously. More often, however, especially in our culture, it is consciously induced by self-harming and drug-taking. For most of us, this sort of self-medication “works.” For a large minority, however, it ends in addiction and death. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

Steven Kuchuck converses with NBiP about his newly edited book Clinical Implications of the Psychoanalyst’s Life Experience: When the Personal Becomes Professional (Routledge, 2013). It focuses on the impact of the analyst’s life experiences vis a vis their clinical mode and mien. The book, with 18 essays, (written by mostly relational or interpersonal analysts with the notable exception of the venerable Martin Bergmann) covers a lot of terrain. It is divided loosely into two parts, with the first section focusing on early life events and the second on later ones.  So we read about the impact of surviving Auschwitz and how it colors Anna Ornstein’s clinical demeanor. And how Susie Orbach, growing up in a family full of both fiery left-wing passions and a plethora of secrets, found herself in possession of a heightened desire to bring things hidden out into the light.  Eric Mendelsohn describes the end of his marriage and explores his work with patients during that time. Philip Ringstrom reviews certain familial themes regarding ecumenism and improvisation and iterates how they play out in his work as an analyst.  Galit Atlas explores her interest in the vicissitudes of sexuality as derived from many sources, prominent among them her Mizrahi outsiderness.  Noah Glassman and Steven Botticelli think through their becoming fathers together of a son and how their clinical listening was impacted.  Variety abounds. Many of the essays are deeply autobiographical. The reader is given a moment to peek into the analyst’s oft’ hidden inner workings. As such, the book satisfies something perhaps prurient. But what is discussed in the interview largely concerns what this book is also symptomatic of; it is no mistake that many writing herein are self-described refugees from what they perceived to be a more austere classical training where what the analyst brought into the clinical encounter was to be redacted.  Additionally, the rigors of analytic work are myriad. In a culture that does not embrace the work of analysis, but rather sees fit to attack it, are analyst’s suffering from certain forms of deprivation? Certainly this book indicates a wish to be seen more fully. And the move towards analytic self-disclosure reaches a kind of apex in this publication. It is one thing to self-disclose to a patient in a session but this book can be read by all and sundry. So in the interview we also discuss the analyst’s needs and what stands in the way of their being met and how the psychoanalytic culture might begin to more frankly acknowledge their existence.  The need to be seen stands in stark contrast to the ideal of neutrality.  This book is reflective of the ever-swinging pendulum, and also the never-ending tension within 21st century psychoanalysis, regarding the now-perpetual lure of exploring the analyst’s subjectivity alongside the extreme importance of leaving room for the patient to elaborate, in an unimpeded way, fantasies, transferences and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

Renewing and traversing the never-ending debate as to whether psychoanalysis is a science, R. D. Hinshelwood, British and on the Kleinian side of life, prompts listeners to consider how we might produce and buttress our knowledge base via implementing scientific methods. By discussing research as an offensive tactic, as opposed to a defensive one, in a world where psychoanalysis finds itself derided as lacking “evidence,” Hinshelwood’s Research on the Couch: Single-Case Studies, Subjectivity and Psychoanalytic Knowledge (Routledge, 2013) teaches us about the single case study and its usefulness for inquiring into the value (or lack) of particular metapsychologies and clinical theories. Questions emerge: Will research on psychoanalysis, proving its usefulness, catch the attention of insurance companies and governmental policy makers, opening currently shut doors? Will affiliating ourselves with science strengthen us? In what ways might research be helpful? Hinshelwood takes us on a tour as he responds to these and other questions in the interview and in the book. In the end we are left with an awareness that research borne of the clinical encounter can yield powerful data. For Freud the consulting room was also a laboratory, and the psychoanalytic method itself a form of research in and of itself. Yet, when it comes to research in the field, we seem to be up against something that at times feels tinged with the impossible. As Hinshelwood writes, “it appears that an extreme standard of mental health is often expected of psychoanalysts, and a suspicion is visited upon us if we are just ordinary.” The implications of this statement for the nature of our researches is plain to see. However, by placing psychoanalytic research adjacent to research in the natural sciences yet apart from research in psychology and medicine, Hinshelwood protects the uniqueness of the method we call the talking cure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

In this interview with one of the founders of intersubjective psychoanalysis, Robert Stolorow discusses his interest in Heidegger and the implications of that interest for the psychoanalytic project overall. What do “worldness”, “everydayness”, and “resoluteness” bring to the clinical encounter? What is the role of trauma in bringing us to a more authentic place? Stolorow is interested in pursuing both what Heidegger can do for psychoanalysis and what psychoanalysis can do, in a sense, for Heidegger. The development of “post-cartesian psychoanalysis” has embedded within it a critique of Freud’s intrapsychic focus. Analysts of the post-cartesian stripe seek to unearth “pre-reflectivity”, those modes of being that are part and parcel of us but remain out of our awareness. There is also expressed an interest in contextualism–and towards that end this book looks at Heidegger’s forays into Nazism as evidence of his own limits, precipitated perhaps by the loss of Hannah Arendt’s love and admiration. But for Stolorow, analytic work is best done by employing the tripartite perspective of phenomenology, hermeneutics and contextualism. Whereas Descartes separated mind and body, psyche and world, Stolorow argues for the importance of bringing those very same things back together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis