George Makari, “Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind” (Norton, 2014)
In his new book Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind (Norton, 2014), the psychoanalyst and innovative historian, George Makari speaks to us about the dramatic history of the invention of the...
20 Jan 201655min
Abram de Swaan, “The Killing Compartments: The Mentality of Mass Murder” (Yale UP, 2015)
For a couple of decades, scholars have moved toward a broad consensus that context, rather than ideology, is most important in pushing ordinary men and women to participate in mass murder. The “situat...
11 Jan 20161h 3min
Christopher Bollas, “When the Sun Bursts: The Enigma of Schizophrenia” (Yale University Press, 2015)
In his second visit with New Books in Psychoanalysis, Christopher Bollas elucidates his thinking about schizophrenia. But he also does more than that; because his beginnings as a clinician are intimat...
21 Dec 201555min
Vamik D. Volkan, “A Nazi Legacy: Depositing, Transgenerational Transmission, Dissociation, and Remembering Through Action” (Karnac, 2015)
Vamik D. Volkan, a native of Cyprus, was touched by ethnic/political violence at a very personal level when he was still in medical school: a very close friend was shot by terrorists during the Cypria...
15 Dec 201554min
Steven J. Ellman, “When Theories Touch: A Historical and Theoretical Integration of Psychoanalytic Thought” (Karnac, 2010)
There are theorists who seem to strive for integration and those who insist on fundamental differences, incompatibilities, and unbridgeable gulfs. Some write from an interdisciplinary position, exulti...
9 Dec 201556min
Andrea Celenza, “Erotic Revelations: Clinical Applications and Perverse Scenarios” (Routledge, 2014)
[NB:Please be forewarned, there is some brief audio difficulty at the beginning of the interview. It does clear up quickly, so please do listen through.] We are drawn to what is hidden. We are excited...
10 Nov 201553min
Darian Leader, “Strictly Bipolar” (Penguin, 2013)
To those unfamiliar with psychodiagnostics, Bipolar 3.5 might sound like the latest Apple software. To psychoanalyst Darian Leader it is indicative of the relatively recent proliferation and growing e...
3 Nov 201540min
Hilary Neroni, “The Subject of Torture: Psychoanalysis and Biopolitics in Television and Film” (Columbia UP, 2015)
Did you notice that after 9/11, the depiction of torture on prime-time television went up nearly seven hundred percent? Hilary Neroni did. She had just finished a book on the changing relationship bet...
27 Okt 20151h
