New Books In Psychoanalysis

As the popular jazz standard tells us, “comes love, nothing can be done”, or can it? Galit Atlas begs to differ in her most recent book Come Closer: Childhood Wounds, Adult Love, and the Secrets of Emotional Intimacy, which describes six kinds of emotional styles, as we might call them, made manifest when we are young. Atlas, whose work has endeavored to sexualize the Relational School, here turns an eye both keen and wistful, towards love.So, I admit to having read a few, but only a few, well maybe more than a few books like this, books that are psychoanalytically informed yet meant for a popular audience. In fact I credit one of them, Harriet Goldhor Lerner’s The Dance of Anger, for edging me towards the study of psychoanalysis. (Yes she is the mother of the author Ben Lerner btw, a fact I love.)As a kind of preview to Atlas’ book, I want to share a little about how I read for NBiP interviews as on reading this book, my usual mode slipped away. I think that reveals something essential about Come Close