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

Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives Through Beckett and Artaud: The Trauma of the Body (Routledge, 2026) provides an epistemology of the body as it relates to subjectivity through an analysis of selected works of Antonin Artaud and Samuel Beckett. Presented in three parts, the book explores a fundamental premise: that there is a traumatic and alienating dimension to embodiment that resists expression within representational systems and is core to the being of any subject. In Part One, The Epistemology of the Body, Meehan O'Callaghan approaches a theory of the body as traumatic by framing it as a question, a gap in knowledge through the lens of psychoanalysis and theatre studies. Part Two, The Body of Drama, is devoted to a study of the body in the works of Beckett and Artaud from the perspective of psychoanalysis. Part Three, The Body Between Being and Non-Being, provides a deeper exploration of how the interrogation of the body opens onto a question of being and uses the insights gained from the dialectical

This material and theoretical history of seriality shows it to be the dominant form of culture since its inception within 19th-century print culture, as both a media structure and a psychic one.The serial is everywhere. Commonly identified by the segmented release structure of an ongoing narrative—from installments of Victorian novels to TV episodes to comic books—seriality names the spread of installment-based storytelling across a range of media. However, Ryan Engley argues that seriality is not only a narrative structure but also a psychic structure. Seriality—in its dependence on gaps, delay, and constraint—names the fundamental trauma of contemporary life: that there exists an intrinsic relation between self and other, a relation that is often difficult to see and difficult to bear.Through formal readings of media texts alongside Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, the dialectical method of G.W.F. Hegel, and Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism, Seriality: Media and the Psychic Form of Everyday Life 

A collection of reported stories that explore the relationship between mothers and daughters, from the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for her work in The New Yorker. You Won’t Get Free: Stories of Mothers and Daughters (Knopf, 2026) of It tells the stories of mothers and daughters searching for each other and for themselves. Rachel Aviv explores the complexity of this relationship in seven essays, six originally published in The New Yorker and reconceived for this intimate, revelatory book. “I wrote some of these stories feeling, existentially, like a daughter, and now I have returned to them with a different identification,” Aviv writes. “It was as if I had failed to see the drama on the mother’s side, too—her particular longings and humiliations and needs.” Aviv writes about one mother searching for her vanished daughter; another who sacrifices herself for her daughters by working as a nanny for other people’s children. In the final story, a daughter’s traumatic experience is erased

This material and theoretical history of seriality shows it to be the dominant form of culture since its inception within 19th-century print culture, as both a media structure and a psychic one. The serial is everywhere. Commonly identified by the segmented release structure of an ongoing narrative—from installments of Victorian novels to TV episodes to comic books—seriality names the spread of installment-based storytelling across a range of media. However, Ryan Engley argues that seriality is not only a narrative structure but also a psychic structure. Seriality—in its dependence on gaps, delay, and constraint—names the fundamental trauma of contemporary life: that there exists an intrinsic relation between self and other, a relation that is often difficult to see and difficult to bear. Through formal readings of media texts alongside Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, the dialectical method of G.W.F. Hegel, and Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism, Seriality: Media and the Psychic Form of Eve

Once dismissed as unscientific, psychoanalytic therapy is proving to be among our most effective medical treatments of any kind - outperforming psychiatric drugs and rivaling vaccines in its power to prevent and heal. Why does it work so well?Perhaps because one of the most controversial figures in psychology was right all along. Neuroscience now confirms much of what Sigmund Freud conjectured over a century ago: our deepest struggles stem, not from chemical imbalances, but from buried memories and unconscious conflicts that no pill can touch.Using enthralling case studies and cutting-edge brain science, pioneering neuroscientist Mark Solms makes the case that psychoanalysis should resume its position as our master theory of the mind. Yet modern research also reveals where Freud got important things wrong. Could correcting these errors make therapy even more effective?As psychiatric diagnoses soar and standard treatments continue to fail many patients, The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Heal

Self-Sabotage: How We Try Not to Flourish (Polity Press, 2026) contends that an unconscious impulse to undermine our own interests plays a dominant role in our lives. The idea of a primary drive to self-destruction is at odds with the prevailing common sense in a world where almost everyone believes that we strive to flourish. Yet often we fail to flourish not because some people are wicked but because the drive to sabotage ourselves outweighs the pleasures of flourishing. Our tendency to self-sabotage distorts our politics, throws off our romantic relationships, and generally makes human existence difficult. It is why we become involved with partners who continually create unhappiness for us, and also why we elect leaders who derail the nation. Although the act of self-sabotage is clearly self-destructive, it appeals to us because it has a creative power. Through sacrificing ourselves, we create sublime value in the world. Our willingness to sacrifice our own interest elevates the value of the

Being with the Body in Depth Psychology: Development, Trauma, and Transformation in the Unspoken Realm (Routledge, 2024), featuring a foreword by Donald Kalsched, examines the integration of the subjectively experienced body in the practice of depth psychology. Barbara Holifield draws from philosophical perspectives, neuroscientific and infant research, developmental theory, and trauma studies to offer a comprehensive overview of embodiment within a relationally based psychoanalytic approach. Clinical vignettes demonstrate the critical value of working with the bodily-felt dimension of implicit relational memory and emphasize how bodily-felt sense facilitates access to feelings. The primacy of bodily-based knowing revealed through infant research illuminates an interior world of sensorial apprehension that conceptually based knowing and psychoanalytic thought often overlook. Furthermore, it establishes the body as intrinsic to relational life. Freud’s 1923 statement that “The ego is first and foremost a bodi

A fascinating introductory volume, Existential Psychoanalysis: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2025) integrates existential philosophy with psychoanalysis, drawing on key theorists from both areas and expertly guiding the reader on how to incorporate these two disciplines, which may appear disparate on the surface, into their clinical and theoretical work. This unique and accessible book sees M. Guy Thompson explore key concepts, such as experience, authenticity, freedom, psychic change, agency, and the pervasive role of suffering in our lives. Throughout, he draws on a wide range of thinkers from both fields, including Sartre, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Freud, Winnicott, Bion, Laing, and Lacan. Exquisitely lucid and engaging, Thompson deftly brings the reader into thoughtful and enlightening territory typically inaccessible to the general reader. Although existential philosophy and psychoanalysis are often thought of as incompatible fields, Thompson shows how they share far more in common th

There is an academic interest in the "Jewish Freud," aiming to detect Jewish influences on Freud, his own feelings about being Jewish, and suppressed traces of Jewishness in his thought. This book takes a different approach, turning its gaze not on Freud but rather on those who seek out his concealed Jewishness. What is it that propels the scholarly aim to show Freud in a Jewish light? Naomi Seidman explores attempts to "touch" Freud (and other famous Jews) through Jewish languages, seeking out his Hebrew name or evidence that he knew some Yiddish. Tracing a history of this drive to bring Freud into Jewish range, Seidman also charts Freud's responses to (and jokes about) this desire. More specifically, she reads the reception and translation of Freud in Hebrew and Yiddish as instances of the desire to touch, feel, "rescue," and connect with the famous professor from Vienna. Join YIVO for a discussion with Seidman about this newly published book, led by scholar Ken Frieden. Buy the book: here This book talk or

A new paradigm that honors the wisdom and wholeness of neurodivergent clients. Focusing on autism and what is medically known as ADHD, neurodivergent author Nyck Walsh takes readers on an anti-oppressive, intersectional journey into a new standard of care for neurodivergent clients and their therapists. Whether new to or well-versed in the neurodiversity paradigm, readers will learn how to best support their neurodivergent clients in a way that prioritizes their well-being, honors their self-expertise, encourages their anti-ableist embodiment, and celebrates their joy. Bridging the theoretical with the practical, Walsh’s model offers a tangible framework that can be applied on its own or in tandem with other modalities. Neurodivergent Somatics in Therapy (Norton, 2026) is an intimate and engaging guide to providing accessible, liberatory, whole-person care that will benefit clients and therapists of all neurotypes. Nyck Walsh, MA, LPC, (he/they) brings a whole person, anti-oppressive, intersectional, somatic

Examining how memory, intergenerational transmission, and kinship work together, Relative Strangers: Romani Kinship and Palestinian Difference (U Toronto Press, 2025) sheds light on Romani life in Palestine. Arpan Roy presents an ethnographic portrait of Dom Romani communities living between Palestine and Jordan, zooming in on everyday life in working-class neighborhoods, and under conditions of perpetual war and instability. The book focuses on how Doms are able to sustain ethnic difference through kinship, even when public performances of difference are no longer emphasized – a kind of alterity that is neither visible by obvious markers like race or religious difference, nor detected by the antennas of the state. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Amman, Roy makes a case for such alterity for Romani people and other groups in the region. Analysing intimate ethnographic scenes through anthropological theories of kinship, psychoanalysis, social theory from the Global Sou

I spoke with author Aliza Einhorn about her new book Tarot of the Unconscious: Uncovering the Hidden Link Between Psychoanalysis and the Cards (Weiser Books, 2026) United States: Red Wheel Weiser. Aliza Einhorn is a Psychoanalyst in training at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies in New York City. She's a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a longtime tarot reader, tarot teacher, and astrologer. “My book is a method” Einhorn tells me. The method is free association. This is the link to psychoanalysis. Einhorn wants us to free associate to the cards as one free associates to dream imagery. “Let’s break it down. In any given Tarot card, as in a dream, there are images, visual details (what Freud might call the manifest meaning), and then there are the hidden meanings beneath those images (what Freud might call the latent meaning), which we only discover after we analyze it.” (p.44) She is enthusiastic about the “infinite” meanings of the cards. In Einhorn’s world Card 7, The Chariot, is on Freu

UberTherapy: The New Business of Mental Health (Policy Press, 2025) is the essential guide to the rise of digital therapy for anyone working in, researching or using mental health services. This timely book explores the emerging uberization of therapy through algorithmic control, datafication of despair and attrition by design. Analysing the deployment of e-commerce business models, this book makes a compelling case that the rise of 'therapeutic Tinder' allows would-be clients to sidestep the deep, uncomfortable work of therapy. UberTherapy offers a defence for the irreplaceable value of human therapists and a roadmap for preserving the legacies of real therapy in the digital world.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

From the inside flap: “A rich resource of Deleuze’s research that is unavailable in his published writing Includes summaries of 216 seminar sessions available in transcripts and recordings Summaries are based on research for the Deleuze Seminars project (co-directed by Charles J. Stivale and Daniel W. Smith), where full transcripts and translations, to which readers will have access for simultaneous or subsequent consultation, have been developed by an international team of scholar-translators Alongside summaries, an attached critical apparatus provides references to corresponding links within Deleuze’s writings, seminars, and other sources to facilitate additional research The texts in this volume - summaries of the 216 seminars taught by Gilles Deleuze - provide unique insight into the latter half of Deleuze’s teaching career. Deleuze understood his seminars as a laboratory for developing his ongoing research, and this volume is a guide to the creative becomings in the development of his philosophic

Addiction, Accommodation, and Vulnerability in Psychoanalysis: Circles Without a Center (Routledge, 2022) explores the compulsions and trauma that underlie addiction, using an intersubjective approach in seeking to understand the inspirations and challenges arising from the psychoanalytic treatment of addiction, compulsivity, and related dissociative conditions. Drawing on insights from his own analytic practice and personal experience, in addition to the work of Stolorow, Brandchaft and Winnicott, among others, Haber considers the complex ways in which addiction becomes woven into a person’s life, and analyses how it interacts with other problems such as depression and anxiety, self-fragmentation, and ambivalence about treatment. Haber creatively integrates the work of Camus, Kafka, and Beckett to further contemplate the dilemmas that can arise during the clinical process and, in identifying his own and his patients’ vulnerabilities and contradictions, provides an honest, humorous and sometimes p

Where do we get ideas about the lives we want? And, what do we do - and fail to do - about actually getting them? In The Life You Want Adam Phillips uses psychoanalytic and literary approaches to show that we are obsessed by the idea of our lives being ones we want and enjoy rather than merely endure, tolerate or make the most of. Through a series of interlinked essays, Phillips explores the difficulties we have around the whole idea of enjoying - and fashioning - our lives in cultures that insistently promote enjoyment while making it very difficult for so many people. Exploring the personal and political overlap in the issue of our lives, The Life You Want (FSG, 2026) is a profound examination of our ambivalence about enjoyment, and indeed, wanting. Adam Phillips, formerly a principal child psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital, London, is a practicing psychoanalyst and a visiting professor in the English department at the University of York. He is the author of numerous works of psychoanalysis and li

The Concept of Emotional Disorder (Oxford University Press, 2025) is a philosophical and academic exploration of how society determines whether emotions are considered normal human experiences or emotional disorders. The book examines the concern that some ordinary emotions may be “over pathologized,” meaning they are increasingly treated as medical or psychiatric problems rather than understandable human responses to life circumstances. Drawing from philosophy, psychology, and mental health theory, Dr. Ayob explores how people evaluate emotions and how those evaluations shape our understanding of emotional disorder. In the author’s framing, the concept of “emotional disorder” is not simple or straightforward. It is built upon many smaller judgments we make about emotions, including whether emotions are reasonable, excessive, disruptive, socially acceptable, or connected to a person’s lived experience. Key Ideas: The book examines how emotional disorders are conceptually defined. Explores whether mo

Are children naturally picky? It sure seems that way. Yet, amazingly, pickiness used to be almost nonexistent. Well into the 20th century, Americans saw children as joyful omnivores who were naturally curious and eager to eat. Of course, this doesn't make sense today. Don't kids have special taste buds? Aren't they highly sensitive to food's texture and color? Aren’t children incapable of liking “adult foods,” and don’t parents risk harming kids psychologically by urging them to eat?But Americans in the past didn’t think any of those things. They assumed that children could enjoy the same foods as adults, and children almost always did. They loved spicy relishes, vinegary pickles, and bitter greens. They spent their allowances on raw oysters and looked forward to their daily coffee. So how did modern kids become such incredibly narrow eaters? The story is fascinating – and about much more than rising abundance. Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History (St Martin's Press, 2026) by Dr.

In Free Association: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2026), Barnaby Barratt presents a compelling and much-needed exploration of the method of free association within psychoanalytic treatment. This concise yet comprehensive book examines the historical roots, philosophical implications and transformative impact on the human psyche of free association, making it an essential resource for understanding the deep unconscious forces that shape our lives. Barratt demonstrates how free association uniquely reveals dimensions of the human condition that remain hidden in ordinary therapeutic approaches. Readers will gain insight into the distinctions between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, the significance of repression and psychic energy, and the profound shifts in being that free association facilitates. Barratt's critical analysis of prevailing theories and alternative methods, such as somatic and shamanic practices, highlights the unparalleled ability of free association to reinvigorate psychic