New Books In Psychoanalysis

Today I talked to Dianne Elise about her book Creativity and the Erotic Dimensions of the Analytic Field (Routledge, 2019). To be in the presence of a person—a woman in fact, and Dianne Elise in particular—who follows her instincts, someone who builds theory from the ground up, and whose theories keep evolving, enlivens the interlocutor. I almost hesitate to say more about this interview for fear it will not live up to the interview itself! We could not record our eye contact, such as it can be (hobbled and skewed) on Zoom, but that we were in a lot of contact during our time together can probably be felt, acoustically and otherwise. I think she is among the most cutting edge thinkers in our field, precisely because she says new things, or things we all know to be true but hesitate (our inhibiting ourselves for fear of making some people uneasy) to articulate. She dares to answer Freud’s question regarding what a woman wants, and then she goes even further explaining, deconstructing really, why that question

Using one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s major ideas as a springboard for their discussion, “The truth will set you free,” the host and co-host discussed psychoanalytic mechanism of defense starting with denial which can emerge when a topic is too painful or difficult to face. A productive dialogue followed that focused on Dr. Filipe Copeland’s description of two different types of denial, Strategic Denial and Psychological Denial as described in “The American Psychoanalyst” (TAP) in an interview with Dr. Austin Ratner, editor-in-chief of the magazine. Amanual Elias’s paper, “Racism as Neglect and Denial” was also mentioned. Stay tuned for more discussions about the ways in which psychoanalytic thinking can help to explain racism in America. 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

Today I talked to Avgi Saketopoulou about her book Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia (NYU Press, 2023). My conversation with Dr. Saketopoulou begins in the clinic “one of the most scary and difficult places one can find oneself in” she says because it is in the consulting room that sometimes things “become traumatic for the first time.” It is here that Saketopoulou first shares her affection for “early radical psychoanalytic thinking” which “put a lot of faith on the possibilities that come from that wounding and from the kind of potentialities that can arise in something becoming kind of like opening up in the consulting room into pain, as opposed to what we are mostly turning towards to as a field in ways that I find both distressing and disappointing, like the idea of healing wounds, of closing up injuries, as if we could ever do that anyway, which I think we can't, rather than embracing or giving ourselves over to what I think is both the insurgent and most interesting radical potential

To give up or not to give up? The question can feel inescapable but the answer is never simple. Giving up our supposed vices is one thing; giving up on life itself is quite another. One form of self-sacrifice feels positive, something to admire and aspire to, while the other is profoundly unsettling, if not actively undesirable. There are always, it turns out, both good and bad sacrifices, but it is not always clear beforehand which is which. We give something up because we believe we can no longer go on as we are. In this sense, giving up is a critical moment--an attempt to make a different future. In On Giving Up (FSG, 2024), the acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips illuminates both the gaps and the connections between the many ways of giving up and helps us to address the central question: What must we give up in order to feel more alive? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

John T. Maier's The Disabled Will: A Theory of Addiction (Routledge Press, 2024) defends a comprehensive new vision of what addiction is and how people with addictions should be treated. The author argues that, in addition to physical and intellectual disabilities, there are volitional disabilities - disabilities of the will - and that addiction is best understood as a species of volitional disability. This theory serves to illuminate long-standing philosophical and psychological perplexities about addiction and addictive motivation. It articulates a normative framework within which to understand prohibition, harm reduction, and other strategies that aim to address addiction. The argument of this book is that these should ultimately be evaluated in terms of reasonable accommodations for addicted people and that the priority of addiction policy should be the provision of such accommodations. What makes this book distinctive is that it understands addiction as a fundamentally political problem, an understanding

The first podcast in this series was inspired by a documentary film made in 2014 called “Black Analysts Speak” as well as some of the findings in the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis published in 2023. It also considered the reasons why racism has persisted so long in America including perspectives from a psychoanalytic vantage point. Mechanism of defense, particularly projective identification was discussed as one specific reason why change has been slow. The host and co-host also talked about the some of the reasons why it is important for white people to listen to the Black experience. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s book, Where do we go from here, Chaos or Community was also considered because of its relevance today. 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 Ho

Marxism and psychoanalysis have a rich and complicated relationship to one another, with countless figures and books written on the possible intersection of the two. Our guest today, Adrian Johnston, returns to NBN to discuss his own latest entry into the genre, Infinite Greed: The Inhuman Selfishness of Capital (Columbia UP, 2024). While the book does retread some already-covered territory, Johnston’s book stands out as a unique entry in a crowded field by emphasizing the theoretical overlap of psychoanalytic concepts with the economic core of Marx’s thinking. Libidinal economics are turned into, well, economics and vice-versa in this detailed and rigorously written study that deserves to become one of the canonical texts in the Freudo-Marxist tradition. Adrian Johnston is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico and a faculty member of the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute. He is the author of numerous books, including three previously discussed on this podcast; A New German Ideali

Did Woodrow Wilson's daddy issues cause World War II? And what might this teach us about our contemporary political plight? Jordan Osserman talks with psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster and historian Patrick Weil about The Madman in the White House: Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt, and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson (Harvard UP, 2023). While conducting research at Yale, Patrick Weil chanced upon the unpublished and unredacted original manuscript of Sigmund Freud and Ambassador William Bullit's notorious psychobiography of former US President Woodrow Wilson - sat in an unlabelled dusty box. Weil's investigation of this incredible and poorly understood Freud-Bullit collaboration led him to radically reconsider Woodrow Wilson's role in the Treaty of Versailles, and the value of psychoanalysis in illuminating a self-sabotage of world historical proportions.  Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in New York City. She is the author of the forthcoming On Breathing (Peninsula, 2025), Disorganisation & Sex (D

Patriarchy and Its Discontents: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (Routledge, 2022) joins luminaries in contemporary psychoanalysis with pioneers of feminism to provide a timely analysis of the crushing effects of patriarchy and the role that psychoanalysis can play in moving us into a future defined by mutuality and respect. Departing from the contemporary psychoanalytic view that the socio-political and intrapsychic are inextricably linked, contributors use psychoanalysis as a tool to demystify and even dismantle patriarchy, while also examining how our theories, practices, and institutions have been implicated in it. The issues under examination here include important and often under-theorized topics such as institutional responses to boundary violations, the search for a black-feminist psychoanalytic theory, patriarchal enactments within the trans community, the persistence of patriarchy within contemporary psychoanalysis, and the impacts of patriarchy on diverse patient populations and ways to address this cli

Masud Khan (1924-1989), was an eminent and, ultimately, scandalous British psychoanalyst who trained and practised in London during an important period in the development of psychoanalysis. From August 1967 to March 1980, he wrote his 39 volume Work Books, a diary containing observations and reflections on his own life, the world of psychoanalysis, his evolving theoretical formulations, Western culture, and the turbulent social and political developments of the time. In Diary of a Fallen Psychoanalyst: The Work Books of Masud Khan 1967-1972 (Karnac, 2022), readers will find fascinating entries on Khan's colleague and mentor Donald Winnicott and other well-known analysts of the period, including Anna Freud. Also featuring in these pages are leaders in the world of culture and the arts such as Julie Andrews, the Redgraves and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Dr Linda Hopkins trained in mental health and became a licensed clinical psychologist and then she underwent Psychoanalytic training. Her book on Masud Khan, the Fal

In An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey (Park Street Press, 2024), renowned developer of Somatic Experiencing Peter A. Levine shares his personal journey to heal his own severe childhood trauma offering profound insights into the evolution of his innovative trauma healing method. Casting himself as a modern-day Chiron, the wounded healer of Greek mythology, Dr. Levine describes, in graphic detail, the violence of his childhood juxtaposed with specific happy and exuberant memories, which helped him prepare for coming to terms with his horrifying experiences. He shares his inner experience of being guided through Somatic Experiencing (SE) to illuminate and untangle his traumatic wounds and describes the mysterious and unexpected dreams and visions that have guided him through his life’s work. Exploring his dream visitations from Albert Einstein in depth, he explains how he came to view Einstein as his personal spirit guide and mentor and how he later discovered his own personal and profound real-life c

Analyzed by Lacan: A Personal Account (Bloomsbury, 2023) brings together the first English translations of Why Lacan, Betty Milan's memoir of her analysis with Lacan in the 1970s, and her play, Goodbye Doctor, inspired by her experience. Why Lacan provides a unique and valuable perspective on how Lacan worked as psychoanalyst as well as his approach to psychoanalytic theory. Milan's testimony shows that Lacan's method of working was based on the idea that the traditional way of interpreting provoked resistance. Prior to Why Lacan, Milan wrote a play, Goodbye Doctor, based on her experience as Lacan's patient. The play is structured around the sessions of Seriema with the Doctor. Through the analysis, Seriema discovers why she cannot give birth, namely, an unconscious desire to satisfy the will of her father who didn't authorize her to conceive. She ceases to be the victim of her unconscious, grasps the possibility of choosing a father for her child and thus becoming a mother. Goodbye Doctor has been adapted i

By viewing psychoanalysis through the lens of embodiment, Brothers and Sletvold suggest a shift away from traditional concept-based theory and offer new ways to understand traumatic experiences, to describe the therapeutic exchange and to enhance the supervisory process. Since traditional psychoanalytic language does not readily lend itself to embodied experience, the authors place particular emphasis on the words I, you, we and world, to describe the flow of human attention. Offering new insights into trauma, this book demonstrates how traumatic experiences and efforts to regain certainty in one’s psychological life involve profound disruptions of this flow. With a new understanding of transference, resistance and interpretation, the authors ultimately show how much can be gained from viewing the analytic exchange as a meeting between foreign bodies. Grounded in detailed case material, A New Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory, Practice and Supervision: Talking Bodies (Routledge, 2023) will change the way therap

Today I spoke with Dr. Louis Rothschild about his new book Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities (Karnac, 2024). Our conversation moved freely between theory, generational attitudes, thinkers, and personal vignettes. What is a good enough father? What is the difference between a man of achievement and a man of power? Who is the father of the mother’s mind? What happens when a father enables holding? How is masculinity valued by other men? What is meant by phrases such as a “man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do?” Why exactly do we need to “call the boy’s father?” How is the father’s role rendered invisible? These are some of the questions subsumed in the broader question of “Who nurtures and who is nurtured?” (And does the myth of the “self-made-man” indicate a man who exists without nurturing?) “What I'm arguing”, says Rothschild, “is that that sexist dichotomy is a mirage in its own right and that attachment strings needn't be severed. They can be reworked over the lifes

The Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche (Unconscious in Translation, 2023) compiles papers written by Dominique Scarfone. Each paper is followed by a conversation about the paper between the author and Avgi Saketopoulou. "I propose we have a conversation after each of your essays as a way to engage your work, to ask for clarifications on the reader's behalf, and to multiply the entry points to your thinking. I imagine that these conversations will work cumulatively, talking the reader deeper into each chapter and also showing your way of thinking not by describing it but by exposing the reader to it 'in vivo.' Part of what your work has offered me personally, which I hope these exchanges will also convey to the reader, is the sheer pleasure of thinking about theory with you -- that it's not a stale or inert process but that, on the contrary, it is an experience in itself." -Avgi Saketopoulou "While an indisputable fact about human reality is that of communication and its corol

Today we spoke with Dr. Helena Vissing about her new book Somatic Maternal Healing Psychodynamic and Somatic Trauma Treatment for Perinatal Mental Health (Routledge, 2023). What does the research of neuro science, immunology and biology tell us about the complex links between trauma, stress, inflammatory responses, and postpartum depression? What are the somatic counter transferences specific to the perinatal transition? What is the difference between empowered mothering and feminist mothering? What are the five tenets of empowered mothering? These are some of the questions we discuss with Dr. Vissing. All of them aimed at answering the larger clinical question, “What do you do with a new mother who walks into your office - how do we sit with new mothers and parents who are shaking to their core?”  Initially a school psychologist specializing in Developmental Psychology Play Therapy, Dr. Vissing was already interested in psychoanalytic or psychodynamic perspectives. When beginning her training in somatic appr

Austin Ratner has an interesting background. After graduating from medical school he decided to change careers. Rather than continuing in medicine he became a fiction writer. This shift seemed to be a good decision since he won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish literature for his first novel, The Jump Artist. He also wrote The Psychoanalyst’s Aversion to Proof which demonstrated his thorough understanding of Freud’s brilliance as well as some of the difficulties he encountered. Currently, Austin has taken on a new role as the editor of The American Psychoanalyst (TAP). He intends to increase the visibility of psychoanalysis by broadening the scope of issues that psychoanalysis can help solve. With the assistance of Austin Hughes who creates new ways of telling stories that inspire readers and creative designer, Melissa Overton, who has designed many impressive projects including collaborative creations at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Austin and his team are redefining how powerful psychoanalysis can be to a

Today I spoke with Dr. Dhwani Shah about his new book The Analyst’s Torment: Unbearable Mental States in Countertransference (Karnac Books, 2022). The son of a sculptor mother and an internist father Shah has always been interested in subjectivity, aesthetics, art, and “how to find objectivity in subjectivity.” He began his practice with the fantasy that “I could understand things, I would know things and then I would be able to treat my patients, heal them, heal myself.” However, when his two-year-old son became (and remains) non-verbal and got the diagnosis of autism these fantasies were “dismantled”. This changed his “attitude about this search for knowledge” and evolved into different way of being with patients and learning how to “painfully accept emotional truth.” Shah’s torments are broken into 8 chapters aimed at helping us understand “what really gets in our way of us really being able to be with our patients.”  Arrogance: the manner in which we can arrogantly transform people into cartoon character

Why would a twin sacrifice her own needs to make sure her same-age sibling is always cared for? What would cause a twin to have panic attacks when he and his brother go away to separate colleges? Why do some twins find it so difficult to develop friendships and romantic relationships? The "twin mystique" and twins' own expectations of their relationship contribute to their difficulties. A therapist who understands the psychology of twins can articulate what's going on between the siblings. Clients will feel validated as well as relieved to gain clarity about a defining aspect of their identity.  Twins in Session: Case Histories in Treating Twinship Issues (Rocky Pines Press, 2018) shows therapists how important the twin connection is, what it means, why it's sometimes more important than the relationship to either parent, and why some twins don't know who they are apart from the twinship. It will help therapists become a trusted outsider who can give twin clients perspective about their twinship issues and as

Many scholars have struggled with Irigaray’s focus on sexuate difference, in particular with her claim that it is “ontological,” wondering if this implies a problematically naïve or essentialist account of sexuate difference. As a result, the ethical vision which Irigaray elaborates has not been taken up in a robust way in the fields of philosophy, feminism, or psychoanalysis. By tracing the notion of relation throughout Irigaray’s work, Being as Relation in Luce Irigaray (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) identifies a rigorous philosophical continuity between the three self-identified “phases” in Irigaray’s thought (despite some critics’ concerns that there is a discontinuity between these phases) and clarifies the relational ontology that underlies Irigaray’s conceptualization of sexuate difference – one that always already implies an ethical project. Jones demonstrates that an understanding of Irigaray’s Heideggerian inheritance – especially prominent in her later texts – is essential to grasping the sense of the