New Books in Psychoanalysis

We interview Dr. Joel Whitebook, philosopher and psychoanalyst about his book Freud: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge UP, 2017). Dr. Whitebook works in Critical Theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, developing that tradition with his clinical and philosophical knowledge of recent advances in psychoanalytic theory. The life and work of Sigmund Freud continue to fascinate general and...

On this episode, J.J. Mull interviews scholar and historian Camille Robcis. In her most recent book, Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Robcis grapples with the historical, intellectual, psychiatric and psychoanalytic meaning of institutional psychotherapy as articulated at Saint-Alban Hospital in France by exploring t...

James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man” is a powerful short story that describes the life of Jesse, a 42-year-old white police officer whose experiences alternate between his present-day struggles with impotence and his memories of racial violence. As the narrative unfolds a pivotal childhood memory of a lynching, sets the tone and comes to represent the fundamental weakness of white supremacy. Hi...

The figure of Sigmund Freud has captivated the Western imagination like few others. One hundred and twenty-five years after the publication of Studies on Hysteria, the good doctor from Vienna continues to stir controversy in institutions, academic circles, and nuclear households across the world.  Perhaps Freud’s sharpest and most adamant critic, Frederick Crews has been debating Freud’s legacy fo...

In Chaos and Control: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Unfolding Creative Minds (Routledge, 2018), psychoanalyst and painter Desy Safan-Gerard explores creativity, its psychodynamics, prerequisites, and possible blocks, and then engages in an extensive examination of her own creative work and process. Major themes include the importance of both accident and destructiveness for the creative artist....

Bion and Thoughts Too Deep for Words: Psychoanalysis, Suggestion, and the Language of the Unconscious (Routledge, 2020) is Robert Caper's most recent book, and it offers a sustained exploration and discussion of key problematics that have informed psychoanalysis since its inception. Caper offers a nuanced discussion of psychotherapy's tendency to fall into suggestion, and thus move away from an ex...

A Psychoanalytic Study of Political Leadership in the United States and Russia: Searching for Truth (Routledge, 2024) provides psychoanalytic insight into the motives of this complex and contradictory topic. The chapters written by the editor of this book focus on the importance of truth-telling and evidence as it relates to presidents of the United States. She studied the way in which some of th...

Even though this is not a political show, today we will be talking about the ways in which mechanisms of defense effected both parties in the 2024 campaign and the presidential election. It is too big and too germane to our society to ignore. If we did, we might be guilty of denial. In this podcast the hist and co-host discuss the following question and how mechanism of defense were employed to wa...

Today I spoke with Emily Dinova about her new novel The Antagonist (Bruce Scivally, 2024). Dinova, a psychoanalytic candidate working towards a license to practice psychoanalysis, wrote The Antagonist as a way of healing her own trauma. Written as a creative act of revenge, Dinova found herself in a fragmented state while writing the book. “I really feel like a fragmented part of myself wrote thi...

Although once marginalized in the field of psychotherapy, spirituality and religion have now become established ethical considerations in clinical research and practice. Drawing from diverse spiritual and religious backgrounds, this book offers clinical guidance for addressing a vast variety of traditions and complex diversity considerations in psychotherapy. Spiritual Diversity in Psychotherapy:...

The question of whether mental disorders are disorders of the brain has led to a long-running and controversial dispute within psychiatry, psychology and philosophy of mind and psychology. While recent work in neuroscience frequently tries to identify underlying brain dysfunction in mental disorders, detractors argue that labelling mental disorders as brain disorders is reductive and can result in...

Today I talked with Stijn Vanheule about Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy: A Road Map to Hope and Recovery for Families and Caregivers (Other Press, 2024). Are we all a little crazy? Roughly 15 percent of the population will have a psychotic experience, in which they lose contact with reality. Yet we often struggle to understand and talk about psychosis.  Drawing on his work in Lacanian psychoanalysi...

How can Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” shed light on Lacan’s maxim, “The unconscious is structured like a language?” In Six Moments in Lacan: Communication and Identification in Psychology and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2018), professor Derek Hook thoroughly investigates and explains a number of Lacan’s major concepts from his structuralist period, making them acc...

This podcast describes a short history of a man who did something we’ve lost in America. That man was James Baldwin who insisted on telling the truth. He confronted the harsh realities of racism, believing that exposing its ugliness was necessary for progress. He rejected simplistic solutions, arguing that racism was deeply rooted in American consciousness and imagination, beyond just political an...

Sandra Buechler joins hosts Christopher Bandini and Tracy Morgan to discuss her latest book, Psychoanalytic Approaches to Problems in Living: Addressing Life's Challenges in Clinical Practice (Routledge, 2019), which continues her long standing exploration of the role of values in the work of psychoanalysis. The book discusses the many common difficulties that drive patients into treatment, such a...

A serious illness often changes the way others see us. Few, if any, relationships remain the same. The sick become more dependent on partners and family members, while more distant contacts become strained. The carers of the ill are also often isolated. This book focuses on our sense of self when ill and how infirmity plays out in our relationships with others. In Being Ill: On Sickness, Care and...

There is an academic cottage industry on the "Jewish Freud," aiming to detect Jewish influences on Freud, his own feelings about being Jewish, and suppressed traces of Jewishness in his thought.  In Translating the Jewish Freud: Psychoanalysis in Hebrew and Yiddish (Stanford University Press, 2024), Naomi Seidman takes a different approach, turning her gaze not on Freud but rather on those who see...

In his new book Masculinity and its Discontents: The Male Psyche and the Inherent Tensions of Maturing Manhood (Routledge, 2021), Michael J. Diamond develops an original psychoanalytic theory of male development through the prephallic, phallic and genital positions. He critically acknowledges and complicates oedipal and disidentification theories as the predominant paradigms in psychoanalytic theo...

An award-winning childhood grief expert shares clinically-informed advice for supporting kids and teens through difficult times--from family deaths and lost pets to unexpected moves, and beyond. A necessary and impactful guide to understanding children's grief from the inside and to guiding children through loss, from the death of a parent and other family members, to the loss of friends, pets, an...

Psychotherapists and psychoanalysts enter an emotional relationship when they treat a patient; no matter how experienced they may be, their personalities inform but also limit their ability to recognize and give thought to what happens in the consulting room.  The Psychoanalyst’s Superegos, Ego Ideals and Blind Spots: The Emotional Development of the Clinician (Routledge, 2019) investigates the na...

From Skepticism to Competence: How American Psychiatrists Learn Psychotherapy (U Chicago Press, 2024) offers an examination of how novice psychiatrists come to understand the workings of the mind - and the nature of medical expertise - as they are trained in psychotherapy. While many medical professionals can physically examine the body to identify and understand its troubles - a cardiologist can...

The third podcast in this series focuses on an article written by Dr. Dionne Powell who participated in the 2014 documentary, “Black Psychoanalysts Speak,” which was an excellent film created by Basia Winograd. Dr. Powell’s JAPA article written in 2018 was entitled, “Race, African Americans, and Psychoanalysis: Collective Silence in the Therapeutic Situation.” This is a an important illustration o...

In Beyond Psychotherapy: On Becoming a (Radical) Psychoanalyst (Routledge, 2019), Barnaby Barratt illuminates a new perspective on the radicality of genuinely psychoanalytic discourse as the unique science of healing. Starting with an incisive critique of the ideological conformism of psychotherapy, Barratt defines the method of psychoanalysis against the conventional definition, which emphasizes...

What does Donald Moss have against common sense, Captain Obvious, sincerity, and everything duh!? At War with the Obvious: Disruptive Thinking in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2018) turns to culture and the clinic to reach beneath semblance, the lure of affect, and the comforts of doxa, and to discuss “erotic thought,” rupture, and conceptual transgression. Moss is interested in how flashes of profou...

In this podcast, Ashis Roy (Psychoanalyst (IPA) and author of the recently published book Intimacy in Alienation: A Psychoanalytic Study of Hindu-Muslim Relationships (Yoda Press, 2024) is in conversation with Dhwani Shah, MD. Shah is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst currently practicing in Princeton, NJ. He is a clinical associate faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at the University...