New Books in Psychoanalysis

Adam PhillipsView on AmazonFor 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!!

Sharon K. FarberView on AmazonIt 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.

Steven KuchuckView on AmazonSteven 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.

R. D. HinshelwoodView on AmazonRenewing 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.

Camille RobcisView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in French Studies] Only in a place like France do the texts and theories of towering intellectual figures like Claude Levi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan come up in public and political discussions of family policy and law. Camille Robcis's new book, The Law of Kinship: Anthropology, Psychoanalysis, and the Family in France (Cornell University Press, 2013) was in part inspired by contemporary French references to structural anthropology and psychoanalysis in contentious debates (within and outside of the National Assembly) about things like same-sex marriage, reproduction, and homosexual adoption. The book is a fascinating political, legal, and intellectual history that takes readers from the Napoleonic Code of 1804 right up to major French societal rifts over the family in recent years. Examining the work of early "familialists" who argued for the family as essential to "the social", Robcis goes on to read Levi-Strauss and Lacan in relationship to ideas and policies dealing with the family in broader political and legal context in France. The book also illuminates the roles of key French "bridge-figures" who translated complex structuralist and psychoanalytic ideas about kinship and "the symbolic", bringing these notions into more widespread political and public discourse. This is a history with important implications for how we understand contemporary struggles over what it means to be French and what defines the family in terms both theoretical and practical.

View on AmazonIn 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.

Lawrence J. FriedmanView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Spiritual Practice and Mindfulness] Erich Fromm, one of the most widely known psychoanalysts of the previous century, was involved in the exploration of spirituality throughout his life. His landmark book The Art of Loving, which sold more than six million copies worldwide, is seen as a popular handbook on how to relate to others and how to overcome the narcissism ingrained in every human being. In his book The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love's Prophet (Columbia University Press, 2013), Harvard professor Lawrence J. Friedman explores the life of this towering figure of psychoanalytic thought, and his position in the humanistic movement, which he belonged to. He gives an overview of the religious thought Fromm was inspired by, from Judaism to the Old Testament to Buddhist philosophy. Fromm's credo was that true spirituality is expressed in how we relate to others, and how to bring joy and peace to the global community. His plea that love will be the vehicle to realize one's true purpose was the central message of his view on spirituality.

View on AmazonIn this interview, held before a live audience at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies in New York City, Lewis Aron and Karen Starr discuss their wide ranging history of the roots of conservatism in American psychoanalysis, A Psychotherapy for the People: Towards a Progressive Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2013). Beginning with the nefarious impact of anti-semitism on Freud's theorizing, the authors argue that in an attempt to protect his ideas from being devalued as emanating from the mind a Jewish thinker, he phallicized them, leading to his famous maxim regarding the repudiation of femininity as the bedrock of sexuality and civilization. Adding to the mix of what has made psychoanalysis in America less than radical, Aron and Starr argue that the impact of the Holocaust may have fomented the development of a kind manic defense which took the form of ego psychology (with its idea of the autonomous and unassailable ego). What becomes clear is that a tendency towards binary thinking (male/female, autonomous/dependent, permeable/impermeable) within the profession has demanded the repression of certain modes of understanding the psyche. Aron and Starr suggest that among the most prominently disavowed of ideas is that we are susceptible to the influence of other minds upon our own. In one of the more compelling arguments made, the authors argue that in the center of the split between what is considered psychotherapy and what is considered psychoanalysis, resides one of the biggest and most menacing fissures to the well being of the talking cure in this day and age. If psychotherapy is seen as the province of care and psychoanalysis as the province of interpretation, rather than that the two are frequently blended into many analytic treatments, who (besides big pharma) is the winner in the end? For Aron and Starr, this split is where psychoanalysis American-style, displays an at-times spectacular self-destructiveness. What is the RX for this dilemma? Listen to the interview and, if you are so moved, write in to describe how you are influenced by what you hear. The authors are game to engage in a conversation about their work and looking forward to hearing from the listenership so that we might strategize together a progressive future for psychoanalysis.

View on AmazonHere at New Books in Psychoanalysis we are celebrating the Summer of Men! We continue our inquiry into the topic of masculinity in psychoanalytic thought as we converse with Robert Grossmark and Bruce Reis about Heterosexual Masculinities: Contemporary Perspectives from Psychoanalytic Gender Theory (Routledge, 2009). The book is devoted to rethinking notions of male heterosexuality from within a psychoanalytic standpoint. Often in the field we think of boys as becoming masculinized by repudiating their identification with their mothers and the female world. This collection of essays begs to differ; boys never give up those identifications and it may be to their benefit that they do not do so. This collection argues that straight guys have been, in a certain way, fall guys–the ones in which other, more marginalized identities, define themselves in opposition to. So what happens when the known quantity proves to be less knowable? This is some of the terrain taken up by this book. Also discussed here are the pre-oedipal father, as well as the fate of the father's body and its erotic components, alongside a discussion considering the possibility of the development of interiority and inner genital space in men. In this interview, the authors explore the paradigm shifts afoot in the field and the ramifications for clinical work that are expectable as a result. The authors exude both seriousness and playfulness as regards their subject matter, making for a perfect August respite (for the analyst on hiatus) and for some pleasurable and moving listening for the rest of us.

Lawrence R. SamuelView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in History] Before the Second World War, very few Americans visited psychologists or psychiatrists. Today, millions and millions of Americans do. How did seeing a "shrink" become, quite suddenly, a typical part of the "American Experience?" In his fascinating book Shrink: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in America (Nebraska University Press, 2013), Lawrence R. Samuel examines the arrival, remarkable growth, and transformation of psychoanalysis in the United States. As Samuel shows, Americans have a kind of love-hate relationship with their "shrinks": sometimes they love them and sometimes they loath them. The "shrinks" seem to know that their clients are fickle, and so they "re-brand" their technique with some regularity. Sometimes it's "analysis," sometimes it's "therapy," sometimes it's just "counseling." But, regardless of what it's called, it's always some variation on the "talking cure" and it can always be traced to Freud.

Donald MossView on AmazonPsychoanalysis, beginning with Freud, has been, albeit perhaps implicitly, a theory of masculinity. Freud's Oedipus Complex, for example, charts the development of masculine identity in the boy while leaving the girl's pathway to femininity less fully explicated. And let yourself recall that Freud's immortal question was not "what do men want" was it? Nevertheless, according to Donald Moss, contemporary psychoanalysis has many glaring blind spots when it comes to thinking about men. Part of what Moss addresses in this interview is the experience of being a male analyst looking at and listening to men. He argues that this kind of male-male analytic pairing has ended up somehow sidelined and so remains under-thought and under-theorized by analysts. His book is an attempt to open an apparently tightly shut if not hidden door, (think "The Cask of Amontillado") in the hopes of both shedding light and broadening our conceptual frameworks for thinking about manhood, masculinity and maleness. Moss draws our attention to some uniquely masculine dilemmas, He argues that on the road to manhood, the boy must pass through the feminizing process of identification. In a sense he is enlarging the popular idea put forth by Greenson, Stoller and Chodorow, each separately, that boys must peel away an initial feminine identification with their mothers in order to become men. Moss argues that to become a man, a man needs a man. "We 'know' we are 'men'," writes Moss, "when we 'know' we are, in some way, fashioning ourselves in the likeness of a predecessor." This need for a predecessor demands that the boy be receptive and open to the influence of the man he most wishes to resemble.  Thus the process of being masculinized demands the boy assume a feminine position. Moss asks us to consider then the impact of internalized homophobia on all men. He wonders if, under the influence of homophobia, many boys defensively turn away from the men they need? And how does this turn away impact the development of a masculine identity? When considering these and other questions, Moss identifies a certain vexatiousness seemingly at the heart of manhood. Somehow, as well, masculinity is often enough a source of disappointment. We hope it will be an incredible resource, a fount of strength, protectiveness and security yet, given our expectations, it often falls far short. Moss argues that, at some level, we had best get comfortable with that chasm. Following Lacan's dictate to never give up on your desire, Moss suggests that we see masculinity as a site of aspiration. But we had also best keep in mind that masculinity can take on elements of a Riviereian masquerade, and by doing so, it reveals its feminine aspect once again.  Repeatedly in this interview, Moss deftly points out the plethora of paradoxes surrounding masculinity, and in so doing, invites the listener to rethink "common sense" notions of manhood and maleness.  Of course, it takes a certain kind of man to expose his own weaknesses–and listening to Moss, the strength and fortitude it takes to do so make for compelling listening–and so with his displays of candor and vulnerability, Moss returns us again to the paradoxical nature of masculinity.

Christopher BollasView on AmazonWhat if analysts took steps to keep their analysands out of the hospital when they were beginning to breakdown? What would that look like? In Catch Them Before They Fall: The Psychoanalysis of Breakdown (Routledge, 2013), the eminent psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas, walks us through that process. Beginning with his treatment of psychotic and manic depressive patients in the 1970s in London, Bollas sought to increase patients psychoanalytic sessions and to work with a team of psychiatrists and social workers who were analytically savvy. When these fragile patients disturbances became heightened, Bollas et co. worked in such a way that none of his patients needed to endure the shock and awe of hospitalization. Now, 40 years later, he has published a book that looks deeply into a way of working that confidently declares psychoanalysis to be THE treatment of choice for the person breaking down. By expanding sessions from five times a week to twice a day seven days a week or from morning to early evening, he discusses with us how breakdowns attended to in this way can become their antithesis: a breakthrough. He is passionate and as always, an intelligent maverick. This interview promises to give analysts and analysands cause to pause regarding our relationship to the frame and the doing of business as usual. His belief in the human need to find a human other to hear us in our darkest moments, an other especially attuned to unconscious meanings, is convincing. For Bollas, being with a person breaking down demands we change our modus operandi. A breakdown is in a way an opportunity that can be dealt with by psychoanalytic means. To not attend to a breakdown is to put the analysand at risk of simply and devastatingly sealing over the elementary forces that brought the breakdown to the surface in the first place. Always thought provoking, in this interview Bollas weds theory and technique, expanding the reach of psychoanalysis with great creativity.

Jon MillsView on AmazonIn this interview, Canadian philosopher, psychologist, and psychoanalyst Jon Mills speaks with us about his book Conundrums: A Critique of Contemporary Psychoanalysiss (Routledge, 2011). In the book he discusses current tenets in North American psychoanalytic thinking and practice that he finds to be concerning and problematic. Focusing on the relational and intersubjective turn currently popular in the field, he articulates what he believes are the faulty ways in which some contemporary analytic thinkers make use of philosophy and, therein, particularly post-modernism.  Though relationally influenced himself, in that he is drawn towards a more flexible, less removed approach in the consulting room, he questions the denigration of the drives and what appears to be a seeming disinterest in life before the acquisition of language.  Mills wonders about the ways in which ideas associated with post-modernism and the practice of a psychoanalytic hermeneutics have been used to drum thinking about the body out of psychoanalysis and what impact that has on our clinical encounters. In this interview the discussion ranges from the problem of therapeutic excess via analytic self-disclosure to the fate of the drives in relational and intersubjective thinking to the emphasis on meaning-making, and the role of philosophy in psychoanalysis. Also discussed are psychoanalytic politics, analytic training, and the relational critique of the analyst's authority. While in this interview Dr. Mills asks some hard questions, particularly of the relational approach, and particularly its philosophical underpinnings, he does so gently and with great seriousness.

View on AmazonIn Still Practicing: The Heartaches and Joys of a Clinical Career (Routledge, 2012), Sandra Buechler suggests that shame and loss are key components of a clinical career, and we would be best served to accept their presence and get used to their ongoing tug and pull. Indeed, clinical training is rife with shame. Buechler reminds us that in training to be a clinician, unlike most other professions, one must investigate one's defenses, one's inner conflicts and do so in public. How to mitigate the shame that ensues? She suggests that we can certainly reduce shame about shame. Shame then must be accepted as an ineluctable aspect of the training. The same with loss: losses of patients, all in good time or out of the blue, also prompt grief reactions and perhaps more shame in the clinician. Shame about shame begets rage, and according to her mentor, Sullivan, anger helps us to cohere in the face of dissolution. She wonders aloud whether shame and loss, suffered in silence, don't end up prompting us to attack colleagues of different analytic stripes, or within our own ranks so as to shore ourselves up. Are the old battles among analysts a displacement of sorts? Yet when an analysand leaves us, even if it is a well-planned termination, the experience is unique. No one we know knows the patient and even if we knew people who did we are bound by confidentiality to say nothing. So the analyst carries around unacknowledged and, in a way. unacknowledgeable losses. Managing these feelings is of interest to Buechler as is the use of writing as a way to transform. Her book is a unique blend of memoir, emotion theory, and a survey of clinical life–and as such, it is in the tradition of new forms of psychoanalytic writing. As an interviewee she was full of clarity and verve and her words will be like salve on a wound for the clinician who is suffering from the slings and arrows, as well as the heartaches and joys, of a clinical career.

John BurnhamView on AmazonPerhaps most of us interested in psychoanalysis in the United States have the idea that, in 1909, when Freud lectured at Clark University, his first and only visit to this country, the profession was launched. That Freud was perhaps an afterthought to a larger celebration at the school may stun us, but truth be told that appears to be the case. In After Freud Left: A Century of Psychoanalysis in America (University of Chicago Press, 2012)–part of what John Burnham calls "The New Freud Studies"–we encounter scholars looking closely at the way in which American culture interfaced with psychoanalytic thinking. During the mid-twentieth century, for myriad reasons, (the Cold War among them), psychoanalysis was a force to be reckoned with in the States. The book, which includes essays by historians of medicine and of culture, among them Elizabeth Lunbeck, George Makari, Louis Menand, and Dorothy Ross, tells a tale of how psychoanalysis resonated with some of the major thinkers of the time–including Lionel Trilling, Herbert Marcuse, and Norman O. Brown to name but a few. Given the contemporary context, aka today, in which psychoanalysis is not currying much favor as a mode of treatment or as a system of ideas, looking at the profession in its hey day will give one cause to pause. These historians argue that cultural shifts, among them the advent of psychopharmeceuticals coupled with new ideas about the self that do not consider the unconscious, have placed psychoanalysis on the sidelines. Dr. Burnham was a pleasure to interview and, as an historian, has been studying all things psychoanalytic since the 1950s. What we love to consider is that he has seen, in his lifetime, many of the changes that the book he has edited chronicles. That he has been writing about psychoanalysis, beginning with the completion of his doctorate in 1958 on the early origins of this profession, only makes this interview more compelling. Something prompted him to take notice then and it is an abiding interest that he has cultivated ever since. We were so pleased to have him with us as a result. In assembling an illustrious group of historians to write about this topic, Dr. Burnham has done a terrific service to a profession that might well want to reflect on its origins.