New Books In Psychoanalysis

Enjoyment appears as purely private matter, but this is by far not the case. Ever since Aristotle the philosophical social critique is tormented by the question, whether the libidinal tendencies of human subjects allow the construction of a just political-economic order. It seemed at first that in modernity this problem had been overcome. Economic liberalism and utilitarianism argued that egoistic private interests and social justice were directly linked and that capitalism united libidinal and political economy in the best possible manner. But the political-economic panorama soon turned out significantly more complex and contradictory. Tomšič’s book The Labour of Enjoyment: Towards a Critique of Libidinal Economy (Walther Konig Verlag, 2020) recalls central Marxian and Freudian insights and circumscribes the political stakes of psychoanalysis under the general banner of a Critique of Libidinal Economy. Samo Tomšič is interim professor of philosophy in Hamburg at the University of Fine Arts. Reuben Niewenhui

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. What might Levi-Strauss and structuralism have to offer to psychoanalysis beyond the incest prohibition and the Oedipus complex? What happens if we understand Lacan’s notion of the symbolic as creative, rather than prohibitory? And what’s the difference between the psychoanalyst and the shaman? Shanna de la Torre’s Sex for Structuralists: The Non-Oedipal Logics of Femininity and Psychosis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) performs a careful reading of Freudian, Lacanian and structuralist texts in order to offer a new way of conceiving of the objects and aims of psychoanalysis today. Alongside it she introduces us to an alternative perspective on Lacan emerging from analysts associated with GIFRIC, a Lacanian school based in Quebec. Listen in as we work our way through some of the book’s major concerns and their implications for theory and practice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. If you thought Jacques Lacan’s essay on "Logical Time" was the psychoanalyst’s final word on the subject, then this interview has a lot to teach you! In his new book Subjectivity In-Between Times: Exploring the Notion of Time in Lacan's Work (Palgrave, 2019), emerging scholar of psychoanalytic theory and continental philosophy Chenyang Wang offers the first systematic analysis of the notion of time in Lacan’s work. Wang, based in East China Normal University, begins by telling us about the state of psychoanalysis in China, before offering a fascinating exploration of how Lacan enables us to radically rethink the past, present, and future. Wang’s approach challenges us to think beyond a linear approach to time and a reductive focus early childhood, rigorously theorising the interrelation of social, bodily, egoic, and unsymbolisable aspects of temporal subjectivity. Toward the end of the inter

On this episode, J.J. Mull interviews co-authors Lara and Stephen Sheehi about their book, Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2021). As they discuss in the interview, the book represents years of research, engagement, and relationship-building with and alongside psychoanalytically oriented Palestinian clinicians working throughout historic Palestine. These relationships and solidarities form the base from which the authors start to think about the intersection of psychoanalysis, decoloniality, and liberatory practice. J.J. Mull is a poet, training clinician, and fellow in the Program for Psychotherapy at Cambridge Health Alliance. Originally from the west coast, he currently lives and bikes in Somerville, MA. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

“Perhaps psychoanalysis survives because it obstinately carries a torch of wild freedom and reverence for the unknowable in a world of rational epistemology and increasingly rigid sociopolitical control. Psychoanalysis does not scream its sociopolitical agenda, waving signs and shouting slogans, but may be a fundamentally political project nonetheless, and one of a subversive nature.” In her book Psychoanalysis as a Subversive Phenomenon: Social Change, Virtue Ethics, and Analytic Theory (Lexington Books, 2020) Amber Trotter teases out the radical legacy of psychoanalysis. Contrary to some attempts in the field to tone down the disruptive potential of psychoanalysis to make it respectable, she champions psychoanalysis as a force of radical change of the individual and collective psychic functioning. A central question of the book seems to be why psychoanalysis rarely delivers on its subversive promise. How might the discipline need to develop to counter its hypermarginalization and position it in optimal and

In 1930, Sigmund Freud wrote Civilization and its Discontents and laid out his theory of civilization: civilization’s a problem, and it makes us unhappy. Freud felt humans were aggressive creatures by nature, that we delight in exercising our aggression and hurting one another. He claimed that civilization, with its laws and mores, prevents us from gratifying that aggressiveness. Elizabeth Lunbeck is a professor in the History of Science Department and Director of Graduate Studies at Harvard University, specializing in the history of psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and psychology. Her written works include The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, and Power in Modern America and The Americanization of Narcissism. See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

Carl Waitz and Theresa Clement Tisdale offer to us a complex and scholarly text in their new book: Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Eastern Orthodox Christian Anthropology in Dialogue (Routledge, 2021). Psychoanalyst Marilyn Charles says of this text, in today’s world, we need faith, but one that is grounded in the essential mysteries that mark the human journey. In this volume, Waitz and Tisdale make a plea for the place of the inexplicable in both psychoanalysis and religion, inviting a reading of each that advocates for, not knowledge, but rather a learning that can continue to enrich our lives and spirits rather than closing down possibilities. For those attempting to move beyond pleasure and fear towards an ethic of personal responsibility, this is an important volume. This book vigorously engages Lacan with a spiritual tradition that has yet to be thoroughly addressed within psychoanalytic literature―the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. Waitz and Tisdale seek to offer the reader a unique engagement with

The first collection of essays from the author of the Life and Death of Psychoanalysis, Stay, Illusion! with Simon Critchley and Conversion Disorder, Disorganisation & Sex (Divided Publishing, 2022) is as much about our resistance to sexuality as it is about sex itself. Jamieson Webster continues to excite and disturb, turning to Lacan and the autotheoretical in her exploration of the deep roots of our libidinal ties and the ways in which we keep desire at bay in our efforts to lead tidier, more coherent lives. Part theory, part manifesto and part testimony, Webster calls for us as analysts to reinvent ourselves with our patients, as patients to take part in the poetry of our symptoms, and as institutions to create the conditions for something radical to happen in the transmission of psychoanalysis. While many in theory have turned toward the soma and the exterior, Webster has not given up on psychic interiority, her writing an attempt to avoid the trap of idealizing one while diminishing the other, or gettin

It is not terribly controversial to say that castration fear is one of the key conceptual engines driving the psychoanalytic project overall. Whether one thinks of it manifesting as a looming, retributive threat for incestuous longings or as a struggle to face one’s shortcomings, contending with what we are at risk of losing or what has already gone missing animates both the field and the consulting room. Imagine the profession if it didn’t contend with this subject: without castration we would have neither Oedipal conflict nor a theory of repression. As such, it is noteworthy to consider the paucity of writing about circumcision in psychoanalysis, especially when you remember that circumcision and castration both involve cutting male genitalia. And before you protest that a penis is not a testicle, it should not come as a surprise that in the unconscious the bits and bobs of male genitalia might not be represented as separately as they are in medical discourse—in the unconscious sometimes a penis is a scrota

If you have ever been skeptical about whether neuroscience has anything to teach psychoanalysis, or vice-versa, you will be stimulated by this book which engages the two disciplines in a fascinating dialogue with each other. How does the mind connect to the body? Why does it feel like something to be us? For one of the boldest thinkers in neuroscience, solving this puzzle has been a lifetime's quest. Now at last, the man who discovered the brain mechanism for dreaming appears to have made a breakthrough. The very idea that a solution is at hand may seem outrageous. Isn't consciousness intangible, beyond the reach of science?  Yet Mark Solms shows how misguided fears and suppositions have concealed its true nature. Stick to the medical facts, pay close attention to the eerie testimony of hundreds of neurosurgery patients, and a way past our obstacles reveals itself. Join Solms on a voyage into the extraordinary realms beyond. More than just a philosophical argument, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source o

How well do we understand our relationship to sex? According to Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, authors of the new book Hatred of Sex (University of Nebraska Press, 2022), we tend to overlook the “unpleasurable pleasures” that are integral to sex. Sex undoes us, destabilizes us, takes us out of ourselves. Many of our 21st century cultural products—Queer Theory, traumatology, intersectional studies—secretly “hate” sex for these very reasons and build such hatred into their ideas. In our interview, Davis and Dean explain why a full understanding and experience of sex require our reckoning with these truths, and they offer conceptual tools for undertaking such a reckoning. This interview is a must-listen for anyone curious about the unspoken dimensions of sex. Oliver Davis is a professor of French studies at the University of Warwick. He is the author of Jacques Rancière and editor of Rancière Now. Tim Dean is James M. Benson Professor in English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of 

How do we go forward in our psychoanalytic understanding of transgender children? This highly contested issue is at the core of an interesting edition of the journal The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child (Volume 75, Issue 1, 2022), titled “Transgender Children: From Controversy to Dialogue”, and edited by Jordan Osserman and Hannah Wallerstein. To counter the feeling of being stuck in an endless spiral of splitting and binary thinking in the field, they have proposed a new model of dialogue: Four scholars of issues connected to transgender children, namely Eve Watson, Oren Gozlan, Tobias Wiggins and Laurel Silber, shared their views in four short papers, and then engaged in a real-time online discussion, which was transcribed and edited for the journal. In the edition, as well as in the interview, a lot of ground is covered: Questions about the psychoanalytic theorization of gender and the mind-body divide are raised and clinical issues like regret, responsibility and countertransference phenomena are discuss

'Whiteness' is a politically constructed category which needs to be understood and dismantled because the system of racism so embedded within our society harms us all. It has profound implications for human psychology, an understanding of which is essential for supporting the movement for change. Helen Morgan's The Work of Whiteness: A Psychoanalytic Perspective (Routledge, 2021)explores these implications from a psychoanalytic and Jungian analytic perspective.  The 'fragility' of whiteness, the colour-blind approach and the silencing process of disavowal as they develop in the childhood of white liberal families are considered as means of maintaining white privilege and racism. A critique of the colonial roots of psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Jung leads to questioning the de-linking of the individual from society in modern day analytic thinking. The concept of the cultural complex is suggested as a useful means of connecting the individual and the social. Examples from the author's clinical practice a

Our contemporary political condition is obsessed with immunity. The immunity of bodies and the body politic; personal immunity and herd immunity; how to immunize the social system against breakdown. The obsession intensifies with every new crisis and the mobilization of yet more powers of war and police, from quarantine to border closures and from vaccination certificates to immunological surveillance.  Engaging four key concepts with enormous cultural weight – Cell, Self, System and Sovereignty – The Politics of Immunity: Security and the Policing of Bodies (Verso, 2022) moves from philosophical biology to intellectual history and from critical theory to psychoanalysis to expose the politics underpinning the way immunity is imagined. At the heart of this imagination is the way security has come to dominate the whole realm of human experience. From biological cell to political subject, and from physiological system to the social body, immunity folds into security, just as security folds into immunity. The boo

Kim talks with Michelle Rada about the death drive in psychoanalysis. Michelle references Todd McGowan’s Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis, University of Nebraska Press, 2013. She also recommends Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets, by Todd McGowan. In our longer conversation, she also quoted, What IS Sex? by Alenka Zupančič, MIT Press, 2017. She also recommends a special issue of differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies on “Constructing the Death Drive.” This issue includes an article by Luce Cantin, “The Drive, the Untreatable Quest of Desire” which she discusses in the epidsode. Michelle thinks the whole issue is worth checking out, and especially recommends the article in there by Tracy McNulty as well, “Unbound: The Speculative Mythology of the Death Drive” and the piece by Willy Apollon, “Psychoanalysis and the Freudian Rupture.” She also highly recommends Life and Death in Psychoanalysis by Jean Laplanche (Johns Hopkins UP, 1976), which

In this episode, Kim talks with Saronik about the game “Fort / Da” — a game played by Sigmund Freud’s grandson in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, (which you can borrow from the amazing Internet Archive). Our cover image comes from another text on Internet Archive, in the Medical Heritage Library’s collection: Die Suggestion und ihre Heilwirkung, written by Hippolyte Bernheim and Sigmund Freud in 1888. The image appears on page 330. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

At the Risk of Thinking: An Intellectual Biography of Julia Kristeva (Bloomsbury, 2020) is the first biography of Julia Kristeva--one of the most celebrated intellectuals in the world. Alice Jardine brings Kristeva's work to a broader readership by connecting Kristeva's personal journey, from her childhood in Communist Bulgaria to her adult life as an international public intellectual based in Paris, with the history of her ideas. Informed by extensive interviews with Kristeva herself, this telling of a remarkable woman's life story also draws out the complexities of Kristeva's writing, emphasizing her call for an urgent revival of bold interdisciplinary thinking in order to understand--and to act in--today's world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

The accusation “you’re deluded” is often used as something of a cheap shot intended to silence an opponent in debate. But what is the nature of a delusion and how can we assess rationality and irrationality? In this podcast, Owen Bennett-Jones talks to Professor Lisa Bortolotti who studies the philosophy of psychology and psychiatry at Birmingham University and is the author of among many other things, Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (Oxford UP, 2010) and most recently edited Delusions in Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

A remarkable exploration of the therapeutic relationship, Dr. Mark Epstein reflects on one year’s worth of therapy sessions with his patients to observe how his training in Western psychotherapy and his equally long investigation into Buddhism, in tandem, led to greater awareness—for his patients, and for himself For years, Dr. Mark Epstein kept his beliefs as a Buddhist separate from his work as a psychiatrist. Content to use his training in mindfulness as a private resource, he trusted that the Buddhist influence could, and should, remain invisible. But as he became more forthcoming with his patients about his personal spiritual leanings, he was surprised to learn how many were eager to learn more. The divisions between the psychological, emotional, and the spiritual, he soon realized, were not as distinct as one might think. In The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life (Penguin, 2022), Dr. Epstein reflects on a year’s worth of selected sessions with his patients and observes how, in the inci

In the hills north of Rome about a month ago I met a woman, a writer, so blown away by her Dottoressa, her psychoanalyst, that she announced to the surprise of all around her (surprised I want to add that she was in analysis in the first place) that she was writing a book about her treatment. I thought of H.D. I thought of Alison Bechdel. Then I thought of Emma Lieber. The Writing Cure (Bloomsbury, 2020), Lieber’s first book, is a hybrid text—equal parts the work of an analysand, a new clinician, a scholar of Russian literature, and a divorcing mother. It is also the work of a Lacanian-influenced analyst whose analytic credential comes from an institute not especially associated with the work of Lacan; as such, the book functions as a kind of “pass”, a representation of what it is that the author wants to present to a community of analysts who she hopes will see her as a peer. Her writing is creaturely by which I mean her words are close to the ground. She is funny. She is droll. She takes you into a nook and