Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)

The Interpersonal School of psychoanalysis developed independent of the classical tradition in the United States early in the twentieth century, and was a harbinger to the relational thinking of the current day. Yet, the contributions of interpersonal analysts have often been glossed over or ignored completely. In his new book of collected papers, The Interpersonal Tradition: The Origins of Psychoanalytic Subjectivity (Routledge, 2015) Dr. Irwin Hirsch, writes in depth of the contributions of interpersonalism to psychoanalysis, including a fuller understanding of key concepts such as countertransference enactments and the impact of the analysts subjectivity on the therapeutic relationship. In this interview we discuss some of the key figures in interpersonal thought, how Dr. Hirsch became an analyst (and a writer) and his provocative and honest opinions on many aspects of current psychoanalytic theory and practice. Find Chris Bandini on Twitter @cebandini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

9 Des 201658min

When it comes to the history of psychoanalysis and psychiatry in the United States, to paraphrase Luce Irigaray, one never stirs without the other. While Freud sent Theodore Reik across the ocean to promote lay analysis, A.A. Brill, president of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, was preparing to divorce the International Psychoanalytic Association. Brill, driven by a fear that psychoanalysis might be seen as quackery and so discredited, sought to guarantee that the only people allowed to practice psychoanalysis in America were medical doctors. Then came the Anschluss: humanitarian efforts were made to bring the very-same IPA members the Americans sought to separate from onto American soil. This is a pretty well known tale–told by Gay, Hale, Roazen and others; enter Orna Ophir’s book, On the Borderland of Madness: Psychosis, Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry in Postwar USA (Routledge, 2015), offering a much needed explanation of how psychoanalysis in America lost its patina. This intellectual history closely studies, via a reading of key journals, the way two professions, for years dancing in close embrace, began to fall out of step. In the same way that the birth of a child with developmental disabilities can reveal a cleavage in what was once thought to be a secure marital bond, debates over the treatment of psychosis led to the eventual separation of two longstanding bedfellows: psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Ophir pieces together the confusing, and previously untold, tale of how psychoanalysis came to be marginalized–and what role psychosis played therein, for its role was key. To carry the conflicted parent metaphor a little further, when a child suffers from psychic distress one member of a couple might seek to understand that suffering in genetic terms while the other spouse might examine the kind of care shown that child: the story of psychiatrically influenced psychoanalysis and non-psychiatrically influenced psychoanalysis line up similarly. While it is commonly known that the release of new medications to treat psychotic pain beginning in the late 1950s, and the birth of community psychiatry in the 70s, and of course the release of the anti-psychodynamic DSM-III in the 80s all played a role in arguments for the superfluity of analytic treatment for psychosis, Ophir argues that psychoanalysis got sidelined because American psychoanalysts, given their long-standing embrace of psychiatry, were duly handicapped. How to let go of the safety-net of psychiatry–that which is deemed irrefutable, scientific and biologically bound–and still survive was their question. Using ideas from the sociology of the professions/knowledge, Ophir argues that analysts engaged in jurisdictional turf wars that the treatment of psychosis brought to the fore. In a profession largely populated by psychiatrists, during a time when psychosis came to be largely seen as a brain disorder rather than a defense or a remnant of pre-oedipal disturbance, analysts had to decide which side they were on. Analytic clinicians, attempting to stay relevant, began to employ the language of psychiatry, supporting what Ophir calls “the neosomatic revolution” only to find that by doing so, they had thrown out the (psychotic) baby with the bathwater. Discursive shifts, be it in politics or a profession, have deep impacts–(when we hear analysts using the language of brain as opposed to mind we are in the presence of the data produced by that impact) and we see proof of this today: very, very few analysts treat psychosis. As in most every divorce that involves children, custody is not usually distributed evenly. Ophir tells the story of how analysts handed over their psychotic patients ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

7 Nov 20161h 1min

In Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire (Karnac Books, 2016), Psychoanalyst Jill Gentile explores the intersection between Freuds fundamental rule of free association and freedom of speech in a democracy, two subjects with obvious connections; however, as Gentile points out, surprisingly few writers have attempted to linked the two. In this interview, which spans the history of psychoanalysis and the U.S. Constitution, Gentile describes how both the psychological discipline and the political system aim at common goals, and that both psychoanalysis and democracy situate freedom in a particular space, a space governed by what Gentile calls a feminine law. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

21 Okt 20161h

The life of the German-born, pioneering American psychoanalyst, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, is intriguing enough in itself, but in the biography, To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (Other Books, 2005), we learn that Fromm-Reichmann played an integral role in mid-century psychoanalysis. In this interview, with the author, psychologist, and historian, Gail Hornstein, we trace not only Fromm Reichmann’s many accomplishments, but also the history of Chestnut Lodge where she worked for many years, her relationships with Erich Fromm and Harold Searles, as well as the cultural impact of the book written by her patient Joanne Greenberg, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden. To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World is essential reading for anyone interested not only in the history of American psychoanalysis, but also psychoanalysis in general. You can find Chris Bandini on Twitter @cebandini. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

13 Okt 201659min

In Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Jonathan Garb, the Gershom Scholem Professor in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explores the rich psychological tradition in modern Kabbalah and modern mysticism. Tracing Kabbalistic writing from sixteenth-century Safed to contemporary New York, he shows how both psychoanalysis and modern Kabbalah have been expressions of the process of modernization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

22 Aug 201630min

Why do relationship partners so often feel isolated and unsatisfied despite all their efforts to show love and caring to one another? And how do they break out of the self-defeating cycles that get them there? In their new book, Irrelationship: How We Use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy (Central Recovery Press, 2015), Mark Borg, Grant Brenner, and Daniel Berry address these daunting questions. They explain how parental disappointments during childhood can set one up for a life of compulsive caregiving at the expense of true human connection, which they call “irrelationship.” They address a growing epidemic by which, in later adulthood, partners use those well-honed caregiving skills to hide from one another rather than become closer. Drawing from cutting-edge neuroscience, psychoanalytic theory, and clinical experience, the authors address how these habitual patterns take shape in the brain and in the soul, and how partners can find their way out of them. The book is full of relatable anecdotes and practical suggestions that any reader who has ever struggled with love and intimacy will find illuminating and helpful. I spoke with two of the authors, Mark Borg and Grant Brenner, about how they arrived at the idea of “irrelationship” and how their skill-based approach has improved the lives of their patients and readers. I hope you enjoy the interview. Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in LGBTQ issues, eating andbody image problems, and working with cultural minorities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

16 Jul 20161h

The rediscovery of trauma in the analytic field coupled with the the development of the concept of dissociation is the focus of a new book edited by two preeminent clinicians, Sheldon Itzkowitz and Elizabeth Howell— The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis: Understanding and Working with Trauma (Routledge, 2016). In this interview, we discuss how this edited book was undertaken and current and historic views of the role of trauma. The authors contend that the concept of trauma itself has been dissociated in the profession, essentially since the disavowal by Freud of infant sexuality. It is only since the relational turn in psychoanalysis that trauma has once again moved to the forefront of clinical work. Here we discuss some of the historic implications as well as several of the twenty two authors’ chapters in this well edited and concise book. Christopher Bandini, LCSW, is in private practice in New York City. Twitter: @cebandini. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

30 Jun 201647min

Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist in private practice and founder of The Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis where she is a training analyst, is a prolific writer and thinker celebrated for integrationist approach to Object Relations thinking. The Compulsion to Create: Women Writers and their Demon Lovers, originally published by Routledge in 1993 and recently re-published by ORI Academic Press in 2013, is Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s first of five published book a labor of her love for the creative process which earned her an honorary Doctorate of Literature from Ignatius University. Dr. Kavaler-Adler calls into question the myth that one must be crazy to be creative and raises concern about the implication that therapeutic intervention is a deterrent to creative growth. For Dr. Kavaler-Adler, the therapeutic process is an inherently creative process. Like the artists encounter with her work, the subject’s encounter with the couch involves an engagement with the unconscious. A comprehensive analysis of Object Relations theory organizes this study around the the Demon Lover theme which appears in both literature and psychoanalysis. Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s own definition emerges from her theory that mourning is an important developmental process, one which, when stunted due to pre-oedipal arrest, leads to what she calls The Compulsion to Create a state of psychological and creative compulsion which hinders psychic and creative growth. Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s The Compulsion to Create is a psycho-biographical examination of esteemed women writers, among them, Anais Nin, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Edith Sitwell, and most comprehensively, the famed Bronte sisters. Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s unique psycho-biographical approach considers not just the relationship between one work and another, but also the relationships between the biographical context which each work proceeds from as it is created, as well as the biographical context it intervenes in when published. In this way, Dr. Kavaler-Adler explicitly connects the manifestation of the writers object relations in her life as well as in her art. Her exquisitely researched book clearly insights the meaningful and inherent engagement between the woman writers life and art at the level of the unconscious. She poetically explains an author’s work is a reflection of the authors internal world just as dreams are. Above all, Dr. Kavaler-Adler encourages a positive engagement between the creative and therapeutic process, arguing that profound creative developments can proceed from effective therapeutic interventions which revive the subject from a state of psychic arrest and the creative collapse which results from it. Dr. Susan Kavaler’s list of publications including her most comprehensive contribution to Object Relations thinking The Klein-Winnicot Dialectic (Karnac 2014) can be found on her website where opportunities to study the Object Relations approach from a clinical standpoint and seek treatment in individual and group settings can also be found, including a group for writers which has been held monthly for 21 years. She has previously been interviewed on New Books in Psychoanalysis by Claire-Madeline Culkin about her later publication The Anatomy of Regret (Karnac 2013). Claire-Madeline Culkin is an analytically minded author. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College and holds a BA in Psychology from Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts. If you’re an author interested in joining the discussion,... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

27 Jun 201657min