What it Means to Forget

Derek Hook and Sheldon George's Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2021) is a path-breaking edited volume that draws upon Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to examine the conscious and unconscious forces underlying race as a social formation. In my conversation with Derek and Sheldon, touching on the main themes of the volume, we explore the problems with popular psychological conceptualisations of racism, the promises and pitfalls of bringing Lacanian concepts like jouissance to bear on historical phenomena, and the possibility of a Lacanian anti-racist politics.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

8 Okt 20211h 17min

Over the past seventy years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has evolved from a virtually unknown and little-used pamphlet to an imposing and comprehensive compendium of mental disorder. Its nearly 300 conditions have become the touchstones for the diagnoses that patients receive, students are taught, researchers study, insurers reimburse, and drug companies promote. Although the manual is portrayed as an authoritative corpus of psychiatric knowledge, it is a product of intense political conflicts, dissension, and factionalism. The manual results from struggles among psychiatric researchers and clinicians, different mental health professions, and a variety of patient, familial, feminist, gay, and veterans' interest groups. The DSM is fundamentally a social document that both reflects and shapes the professional, economic, and cultural forces associated with its use. In DSM: A History of Psychiatry's Bible (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021), Allan V. Horwitz examines how the manual, known colloquially as "psychiatry's bible," has been at the center of thinking about mental health in the United States since its original publication in 1952. The first book to examine its entire history, this volume draws on both archival sources and the literature on modern psychiatry to show how the history of the DSM is more a story of the growing social importance of psychiatric diagnoses than of increasing knowledge about the nature of mental disorder. Despite attempts to replace it, Horwitz argues that the DSM persists because its diagnostic entities are closely intertwined with too many interests that benefit from them. This comprehensive treatment should appeal to not only specialists but also anyone who is interested in how diagnoses of mental illness have evolved over the past seven decades—from unwanted and often imposed labels to resources that lead to valued mental health treatments and social services. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

24 Sep 202158min

Towards an Ecopsychotherapy (Confer Books, 2020) provides an overview of ecopsychology and introduces the newly emerging field of ecopsychotherapy, including insightful case examples for practitioners. However, ecopsychotherapy is not simply a technique to be applied in therapy; for practitioner and client, it involves a change in perspective. Rust gives a solid introduction to this evolving work, with a critical eye and a deep awareness of the quickening impacts of climate change. Mary Jayne Rust is an ecopsychologist, art therapist, and Jungian analyst. Her numerous publications include the timely book VItal Signs: Psychological Response to Ecological Crisis. She grew up by the sea and now lives and works overlooking ancient woodlands in North London. Dr. Susan Grelock Yusem is an independent researcher trained in depth psychology, with an emphasis on community, liberation, and eco-psychologies. Her work centers around interconnection and encompasses regenerative food systems, the arts and conservation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

8 Sep 202158min

Stigma about mental illness makes life doubly hard for people suffering from mental or emotional distress. In addition to dealing with their conditions, they must also contend with social shame and secrecy. But by examining how mental illness is conceived of and treated in other cultures, we can improve our own perspectives in the Western world. In his new book, Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness (Norton, 2021), anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker offers a critique of our current mental health system based on cross-cultural observations as well as suggestions for improving upon it. In our interview, we talk about the impact of stigma on mental health treatment and his ideas about where it comes from. He also explains why he feels optimistic about recent trends in the way individuals speak about their mental health challenges. Roy Richard Grinker is professor of anthropology and international affairs at George Washington University. His specialties include ethnicity, nationalism, and psychological anthropology, with topical expertise in autism, Korea, and sub-Saharan Africa. He is also the director of George Washington University’s Institute for Ethnographic Research and editor-in-chief of the journal Anthropological Quarterly. He is author of several books, including Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism. He lives in Washington, DC. Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute in Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology in New York City and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group; and faculty at Florida Psychoanalytic Institute in Miami. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (2018, Routledge) and has published on issues of gender, sexuality, and sexual abuse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

1 Sep 202148min

Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults (Phoenix Publishing House, 2021) by Susan and Marcus Evans is an uncomfortable book on the politically and clinically contested subject of gender dysphoria in young people. From their psychoanalytically informed perspective, gender dysphoria is a developmental disorder that looks to control ordinary developmental processes by employing primitive psychological mechanisms, much like a psychic retreat in John Steiner's sense. By firmly asserting basic psychoanalytical tenets like the inevitability of psychic pain in coming to terms with the developing sexual body or the need to take psychodynamic account of so called comorbidities, they question a one-size-fits-all affirmative approach to adolescent gender dysphoria and the wish to transition. Rather they offer a model of psychotherapeutic treatment for the complex difficulties faced by some gender-dysphoric teens that they elaborate in a rich array of case descriptions. There are many issues with their approach that are being discussed in the interview: What is the use of offering psychotherapy, let alone psychoanalysis, to a population that wants no part of it? How do we stay in an analytic position of curiosity, doubt and uncertainty when faced with demands to act either in favor or against medical transitioning? And why do they focus almost exclusively on de-transitioners in their clinical narrative? Listen to the conversation to hear their perspective on these and other problems. Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

9 Aug 20211h 2min

What does psychoanalysis want? In The Desire of Psychoanalysis: Exercises in Lacanian Thinking (Northwestern UP, 2021), analyst and academic Gabriel Tupinambá takes the Lacanian world to task for failing to properly address this question and, in so doing, both overestimating the field's political applicability, and undervaluing the role of analysands, contributing to the socio-economic and racial inequalities that plague the discipline. In our interview, Tupinambá introduces us to some of the major themes of his strikingly original book, alongside a discussion of how his experiments in political work in Brazil have informed his thinking. Jordan Osserman is a postdoctoral research fellow and psychoanalyst in training in London. He can be reached at jordan.osserman@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

26 Juli 20211h 24min

Scott Krzych's book Beyond Bias: Conservative Media, Documentary Form, and the Politics of Hysteria (Oxford University Press, 2021) offers the first scholarly study of contemporary right-wing documentary film and video. Drawing from contemporary work in political theory and psychoanalytic theory, the book identifies what author Scott Krzych describes as the hysterical discourse prolific in conservative documentary in particular, and right-wing media more generally. In our chat, Scott and I review the development of conservative documentaries and discuss the various frameworks used to present ideas, as well as specific methods used to present information. Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

23 Juli 20211h 14min

Psychoanalysis began as a politicized form of treatment for people from all walks of life. Yet in the United States, it has become divorced from these roots and transformed into a depoliticized treatment for the most well-to-do, according to my guests, Drs. Patricia Gherovici and Christopher Christian. Their edited book, Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious (Routledge, 2018), returns psychoanalysis to its social activist origins, with special emphasis on its urgency and usefulness for Latinx patients, including the poor. In our interview, we discuss the possibilities and necessity for bringing psychoanalysts to the barrios, as well as the unique offerings the barrio might have for psychoanalysis. Patricia Gherovici, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Philadelphia and New York, an analytic supervisor, and a recipient of the 2020 Sigourney Award for her clinical and scholarly work with Latinx and gender variant communities. Her single-authored books include The Puerto Rican Syndrome (Other Press: 2003) winner of the Gradiva Award and the Boyer Prize, Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of Transgenderism (Routledge: 2010) and Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference ​(Routledge: 2017). Christopher Christian, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New Haven, CT and co-editor of the book Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Conflict with Morris Eagle and David Wolitzky. He is also co-editor with Michael J. Diamond of the book The Second Century of Psychoanalysis: Evolving Perspectives on Therapeutic Action. He serves as dean of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (aka IPTAR), where he is also a supervising and training analyst. And he was co-executive producer of the documentary Psychoanalysis in El Barrio. Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute in Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology in New York City and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group; and faculty at Florida Psychoanalytic Institute in Miami. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (2018, Routledge) and has published on issues of gender, sexuality, and sexual abuse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

21 Juli 202148min