New Books in Psychoanalysis

Being human, much of our energy goes into resisting the basic mess of life, but messy it is nonetheless. The trick (as psychoanalysts know) is to embrace it all anyway. “Trauma is an indivisible part of human existence. It takes many forms but spares no one,” so writes psychiatrist and practicing Buddhist Dr. Mark Epstein. [...]

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, [...]

Elizabeth Lunbeckhas 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 [...]

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). Itfocuses 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 [...]

In 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 [...]

[Cross-posted fromNew 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 bookShrink: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in America(Nebraska University Press, 2013),Lawrence R. Samuelexamines the [...]

Who doesn’t want to know what women want, right? Well, in this interview with Hendrika Freud, we begin to get the idea that women often prefer not to know. As I sit in my private practice, many of my female patients put on a good smoke and mirror show, cloaking desires behind reaction formations, saying [...]