New Books in Psychoanalysis
This podcast is part of the New Books Network, an academic audio library dedicated to public education. Each episode features scholars discussing their recently published research with another expert in their field. The channel focuses specifically on psychoanalysis, offering in-depth interviews about new books in the field. Listeners can explore over 150 channels and 28,000 episodes on the network's website.
Episodes
Todd McGowan, "Self-Sabotage: How We Try Not to Flourish" (Polity Press, 2026)
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 ar
Barbara Holifield, "Being with the Body in Depth Psychology: Development, Trauma, and Transformation in the Unspoken Realm" (Routledge, 2024)
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 studi
M. Guy Thompson, "Existential Psychoanalysis: A Contemporary Introduction" (Routledge, 2025)
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 a
Psychoanalysis and Jewish Languages
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 Seidm
Nyck Walsh, "Neurodivergent Somatics in Therapy: An Anti-Oppressive Model for Whole Person Care" (Norton, 2026)
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 su
Arpan Roy, "Relative Strangers: Romani Kinship and Palestinian Difference" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
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
Elizabeth Cotton, "UberTherapy: The New Business of Mental Health" (Policy Press, 2025)
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 mak
Aliza Einhorn, "Tarot of the Unconscious: Uncovering the Hidden Link Between Psychoanalysis and the Cards" (Weiser Books, 2026)
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,
Charles J. Stivale, "Unfolding the Deleuze Seminars, 1970–1987: Summaries and Commentary" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
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 si
Darren Haber, "Addiction, Accommodation, and Vulnerability in Psychoanalysis: Circles Without a Center" (Routledge, 2022)
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 o
Adam Phillips, "The Life You Want" (FSG, 2026)
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 diffi
Gloria Sibson Ayob, "The Concept of Emotional Disorder" (Oxford UP, 2025)
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 understanda
Helen Veit, "Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History" (St Martin's Press, 2026)
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 “
Barnaby B. Barratt, "Free Association: A Contemporary Introduction" (Routledge, 2026)
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
Lara Sheehi, "From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures" (Pluto Press, 2026)
Psychoanalysis is rising in popularity, but it’s not helping patients navigate the pressures and harms of modern capitalism. Instead, it continues to enforce oppressive structures, state power, and reactionary politics. In From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures (Pluto Press, 2026) Dr. Lara Sheehi reimagines what psychoanalysis could be. She shows how it can help
Andrea Gutiérrez-Glik, "Healing the Oppressed Body: A Therapeutic Guide for Radical Self-Liberation" (Penguin, 2026)
An essential guide to healing from oppression-based trauma, for everyone left outside of mainstream conversations There are many books on trauma healing that can change people’s lives. Yet when queer and trans people, people of color, and all of us living at the margins look for books that reflect our own experiences and that specifically name the oppression we experience as trauma, we’re left emp
Roger Frie, "Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism and the Holocaust" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Erich Fromm, the prominent twentieth-century public intellectual and psychoanalyst, was recognized for his courageous stand against fascism, racism, and human destructiveness. Until now, however, little has been known about the extent to which Fromm's personal experience of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust shaped his outlook and work.In Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism and the Holocaust (Ox
Must We Drown in the Wake? Notes on Addressing Racism in Psychoanalytic Institutes
Tracy Morgan is a psychoanalyst in private practice in NYC seeing individuals, couples and groups. She is a member of the faculty at CMPS, a founding member of Das Unbehagen and the founding editor of the award winning podcast New Books in Psychoanalysis.
She has published on a variety of subjects ranging from Gay and African American history, social movement theory, and psychoanalysis. Her most
Stephen Grosz, "Love's Labour: How We Break and Make the Bonds of Love" (Vintage, 2026)
When it comes to love why do we find things so difficult? Drawing on over forty years of candid and surprising conversations with his patients, Stephen Grosz asks, what gets in the way of our falling in love? And what must we do to stay there?In the intimate space of the consulting room, we meet the woman who can't post her wedding invitations but then, decades later, can't decide whether to get d
Osamu Kitayama and Jhuma Basak, "Psychoanalytic Explorations into the Primal Relationship in Japan and India" (Routledge, 2025)
In this episode of the New Books Network, I sat down with the contributors of Psychoanalytic Explorations into the Primal Relationship in Japan and India (Routledge, 2025) to discuss the profound psychic textures of the East.
Moving away from the traditional Eurocentric focus on the Oedipal complex, this volume investigates the "primal relationship"—the foundational bond between mother and infant
Marilyn Charles, "Echoes of Trauma: Meaning and Identity in Psychoanalysis" (American Psychological Association, 2025)
Echoes of Trauma: Meaning and Identity in Psychoanalysis (American Psychological Association, 2025) intricately weaves psychoanalytic and developmental theory to explain how we become who we are, and how we might grow beyond the places we get stuck.In recent decades psychological research and practice has focused heavily on cognitive domains, with far less attention paid to the nonverbal systems t
Joanna Bourke, "Five Evil Women: Hindley, West, Wuornos, Homolka, Tucker" (Reaktion, 2026)
Why do certain women become icons of evil? Five Evil Women: Hindley, West, Wuornos, Homolka, Tucker (Reaktion, 2026) by Professor Joanna Bourke offers the first comparative, non-sensationalist account of five of the most reviled women in the modern Anglophone world: Myra Hindley, Rosemary West, Aileen Wuornos, Karla Homolka and Karla Faye Tucker. It examines their lives, crimes and cultural recept
Mari Ruti and Gail N. Newman, "The Creative Self: Beyond Individualism" (Columbia UP, 2025)
In their book The Creative Self: Beyond Individualism (Columbia UP, 2025) Mari Ruti and Gail N. Newman offer our beleaguered souls a breather. Together they tackle the question of what makes life worth living, and before you recoil at the sound of that question, which intentionally has a little neoliberal ring to it, emphasis mine, let me say that this book studies and challenges the neoliberal w
Erica Lorentz, "Body As Shadow: Jung’s Method of Embodied Healing" (Karnac, 2026)
Body as Shadow: Jung’s Method of Embodied Healing is Jungian analyst Erica Lorentz’s passionate, clinically grounded argument that Jung’s psychology was never meant to be “head-only.” It was always an embodied practice, one that asks us to meet psyche where it actually lives: in sensation, emotion, energy, imagination, and what Jung called the somatic unconscious or subtle body.
At the heart of t
Joseph Scalia III and Lynne S. Scalia, "Critical Consciousness: Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education" (Routledge, 2025)
Critical Consciousness: Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education (Routledge, 2025) provides insight into the antagonism and disputative dialogue present in contemporary discourse.
Our guest for this interview, author Joseph Scalia III, Psya.D. is a psychoanalyst, environmental activist, and Co-Director of the Institute for a Democratic Psychoanalysis. Co-authored with Ly
Louis Rothschild, "Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons: Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities" (Karnac, 2023)
Today I spoke with Dr. Louis Rothschild about his new book Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities (Karnac, 2024). Our conversation moved freely between theory, generational attitudes, thinkers, and personal vignettes.
What is a good enough father? What is the difference between a man of achievement and a man of power? Who is the father of the mother’s mind? Wha
Juliane Maxwald, "Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)
Today I spoke with Juliane Maxwald abut her new book Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality (Taylor & Francis, 2025). Maxwald bridges psychoanalytic theory with contemporary sex therapy to demonstrate that sexual symptoms are rarely just about sex—they're embodied expressions of unconscious conflict, early attachment wounds, relational trauma, and unmet developme
Anna Fishzon, "The Impossible Return - Psychoanalytic Reflections on Breast Cancer, Loss, and Mourning" (Routledge, 2025)
Today I spoke with Anna Fishzon about her new book The Impossible Return - Psychoanalytic Reflections on Breast Cancer, Loss, and Mourning (Routledge, 2025). The Impossible Return is a hybrid work of cancer memoir, psychoanalytic theory, and Soviet history that explores the author's experience with breast cancer through the lens of mourning, loss, and identity. Fishzon weaves together her person
Betty Milan, "Analyzed by Lacan: A Personal Account" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Analyzed by Lacan: A Personal Account (Bloomsbury, 2023) brings together the first English translations of Why Lacan, Betty Milan's memoir of her analysis with Lacan in the 1970s, and her play, Goodbye Doctor, inspired by her experience.
Why Lacan provides a unique and valuable perspective on how Lacan worked as psychoanalyst as well as his approach to psychoanalytic theory. Milan's testimony show
Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, "Hatred of Sex" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
How well do we understand our relationship to sex? According to Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, authors of the new book Hatred of Sex (University of Nebraska Press, 2022), we tend to overlook the “unpleasurable pleasures” that are integral to sex. Sex undoes us, destabilizes us, takes us out of ourselves. Many of our 21st century cultural products—Queer Theory, traumatology, intersectional studies—secr
Nancy McWilliams, "Psychoanalytic Supervision" (Guilford Publications, 2021)
Drawing on deep reserves of experience and theoretical and research knowledge, Nancy McWilliams presents a fresh perspective on psychodynamic supervision in this highly instructive work. In Psychoanalytic Supervision (Guilford Publications, 2021), McWilliams examines the role of the supervisor in developing the therapist's clinical skills, giving support, helping to formulate and monitor treatmen
Mary Edwards, "Sartre’s Existential Psychoanalysis: Knowing Others" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Thinking of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, it is hard to think of him without imagining him in very particular contexts. One will likely imagine him in a Parisian cafe working through a pack of cigarettes and coffee, working on his latest play while waiting for his friend Pierre to arrive. His theories of freedom against the temptations of bad faith are thought to be theories of writers
Jamieson Webster, "Disorganisation & Sex" (Divided Publishing, 2022)
The first collection of essays from the author of the Life and Death of Psychoanalysis, Stay, Illusion! with Simon Critchley and Conversion Disorder, Disorganisation & Sex (Divided Publishing, 2022) is as much about our resistance to sexuality as it is about sex itself. Jamieson Webster continues to excite and disturb, turning to Lacan and the autotheoretical in her exploration of the deep roots o
Jane G. Goldberg, "Wired for Why: How We Think, Feel, and Make Meaning" (2025)
WIRED FOR WHY: How We Think, Feel and Make Meaning. (Self-Published 2025) spans eighteen chapters exploring everything from how we manage to stay alive against all odds, to why language separates us from other species, to whether death might be a metaphor. It's a journey through neuroscience, psychoanalysis, history, and philosophy that challenges readers to reconsider their most basic assumptions
Dominique: the Case of an Adolescent interview with Jamieson Webster
Psychoanalysts Jamieson Webster and Jordan Osserman discuss the recently republished, revised translation of Françoise Dolto's Dominique: The Case of an Adolescent. While the child psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto stands alongside Jacques Lacan as a leading light of the Other French School, she has been little translated and remains curiously unknown in the English-speaking world. First published in
Ashis Roy, "Intimacy in Alienation: A Psychoanalytic Study of Hindu-muslim Relationships" (Yoda Press, 2024)
What happens when an analyst conducts interviews—and I am not speaking here about interviewing other analysts as we do at NBiP, but rather what happens when an analyst does field research, and researches one of the eternal subjects of our field which is to say love and also, to borrow from Gregorio Kohon, its’ vicissitudes?
Locating within himself demeaning feelings towards an other—and the setti
Uncanny E.T.A. Hoffmann with Peter Wortsman
Step into the unsettling world of E.T.A. Hoffmann with translator Peter Wortsman to explore “The Sandman”—a tale that haunted Freud enough to spark his famous psychoanalytic analysis of “The Uncanny,” examining familiar things that unsettle and disturb us for no clear reason. What makes this bizarre story so deeply disturbing, even today? And how does Hoffmann’s genius, in all of his writing, cont
Todd McGowan, "The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The difficulty of Jacques Lacan's thought is notorious. The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan cuts through this difficulty to provide a clear, jargon-free approach to understanding it. The book describes Lacan's life, the context from which he emerged, and the reception of his theory. Readers will come away with an understanding of concepts such as jouissance, the objet a, and the big Other.
Jon Mills, "End of the World: Civilization and Its Fate" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)
Dr. Jon Mills, has had an impressive career as practicing professional, researcher, educator and writer in the psychology and psychoanalytic field.
His work bounds the world of philosophy and psychology, focusing upon both individual human behavior and the manifestation of the collective behavior in the social context.
He is the author and/or editor of over 30 books in psychoanalysis, philosophy
The Unconscious Calculus of Justice: Racial Bias in Legal Outcomes
This episode of “A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Racism in America” takes a deep dive into the disturbing legal outcomes of state-sanctioned violence. The host and co-host, Dr. Karyne Messina and Dr. Felecia Powell-Williams, analyze the Department of Justice's sentencing recommendation for Brett Hankison, one of the officers involved in the raid that led to Breonna Taylor's death. The episode uses
Vanessa Sinclair et al., "The Queerness of Psychoanalysis: From Freud and Lacan to Laplanche and Beyond" (Routledge, 2024)
The Queerness of Psychoanalysis: From Freud and Lacan to Laplanche and Beyond (Routledge, 2024) is an exploration of psychoanalysis' often complicated and fraught history with thinking about queerness, as well as its multifaceted heritage. Throughout the chapters, the contributors write about psychoanalysis’ relationship with queerness, the ways in which queerness is represented in the psychoanaly
Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, "Hatred of Sex" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
Hatred of Sex (U Nebraska Press, 2022) links Jacques Rancière’s political philosophy of the constitutive disorder of democracy with Jean Laplanche’s identification of a fundamental perturbation at the heart of human sexuality. Sex is hated as well as desired, Oliver Davis and Tim Dean contend, because sexual intensity impedes coherent selfhood and undermines identity, rendering us all a little mo
Tom Wooldridge, "Eating Disorders: A Contemporary Introduction" (Routledge, 2022)
Eating Disorders: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2022) presents an accessible introduction to the conceptualization and treatment of eating disorders from a psychoanalytic perspective.
Each of the chapters offers a different perspective on these difficult-to-treat conditions and taken together, illustrate the breadth and depth that psychoanalytic thinking can offer both seasoned clinicia
Madness & Acute Religious Experiences, with Richard Saville-Smith
Host Pierce Salguero sits down with Richard Saville-Smith, an independent scholar of madness, religion, and psychiatry. We discuss Richard’s book Acute Religious Experiences (2023), which argues that frameworks from Mad Studies can get us out from under the academy’s current habit of either pathologizing or sanitizing religious experiences. Along the way, we talk about the power struggle between p
Eli Zaretsky, “Political Freud: A History” (Columbia UP, 2015)
Back in the early 70s, Eli Zaretsky wrote for a socialist newspaper and was engaged to review a recently released book, Psychoanalysis and Feminism by Juliet Mitchell. First, he decided, he’d better read some Freud. This started a life-long engagement with psychoanalysis and leftist politics, and his new book Political Freud: A History (Columbia University Press, 2015) conveys the richness of his
Daniel José Gaztambide, "Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique: Putting Freud on Fanon's Couch" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
Both new and seasoned psychotherapists wrestle with the relationship between psychological distress and inequality across race, class, gender, and sexuality. How does one address this organically in psychotherapy? What role does it play in therapeutic action? Who brings it up, the therapist or the patient?
Daniel José Gaztambide addresses these questions by offering a rigorous decolonial approach
Foluke Taylor, "Unruly Therapeutic: Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room" (Norton, 2023)
In 1977, The Combahee River Collective, a group of Black American feminists issued a statement communicating the harrowing following:
“The psychological toll of being a Black woman…can never be underestimated. There is a low value placed on Black women’s psyches in this society, which is both racist and sexist. We are dispossessed psychologically and on every other level and yet we feel the need
Marion Bower, "The Life and Work of Joan Riviere: Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality" (Routledge, 2018)
Joan Riviere (1883-1962) is best known for her role in promoting the ideas of others. She came to prominence in the world of psychoanalysis as Freud’s favorite translator and Melanie Klein’s earliest and most loyal supporter.
In her new book The Life and Work of Joan Riviere: Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality (Routledge, 2018), Marion Bower puts Joan Riviere herself, the woman and the psychoanalys
The Tug of War: Why Racial Progress Often Meets Resistance and Backlash
Dr. Karyne Messina and Dr. Felicia Powell-Williams, the host and co-host of “Psychoanalytic Perspectives of Racism in America” sponsored by The American Psychoanalytic Association explored how employing mechanisms of defense perpetuates racial injustice’s movement forward and the resistance it faces as a tug of war, i.e., progress followed by backlash.
They examined the symbolic removal of Dr. Ma
Halina Brunning and Olya Khaleelee eds., "Sitting on a Suitcase: Psychoanalytic Stories" (Karnac Books, 2025)
Sitting on a Suitcase: Psychoanalytic Stories (Karnac Books, 2025) contains eighteen moving tales of disparate Jewish lives from Eliat Aram, Leslie B. Brissett, Louisa Diana Brunner, Halina Brunning, Leila Djemal, Shmuel Erlich, Mira Erlich-Ginor, Franca Fubini, Stan Gold, Larry Hirschhorn, Susan Kahn, Alicia E. Kaufmann, Olya Khaleelee, James Krantz, Vega Zagier Roberts, Edward R. Shapiro, Mannie
Noëlle McAfee, "Fear of Breakdown: Psychoanalysis and Politics" (Columbia UP, 2019)
In his classic essay on the fear of breakdown, Donald Winnicott famously conveys to a patient that the disaster powerfully feared has, in fact, already happened. Taking her cue from Winnicott, Noëlle McAfee’s Fear of Breakdown: Psychoanalysis and Politics (Columbia University Press, 2019), explores the implications of breakdown fears for the practice of democracy.
Democracy, as you may dimly recal
Jack Black and Joseph S Reynoso eds., "Sport and Psychoanalysis: Sport and Psychoanalysis: What Sport Reveals about Our Unconscious Desires, Fantasies, and Fears" (Lexington Books, 2024)
Sport and Psychoanalysis: What Sport Reveals about Our Unconscious Desires, Fantasies, and Fears (Lexington Books, 2024) explores the intersection of sport and psychoanalysis, emphasizing the often-overlooked psycho-social dimensions underpinning the experience of sport. In this podcast, Jordan Osserman speaks to editors Jack Black and Joseph S. Reynoso about the book and their wider, ongoing wor
David P. Celani, "Ronald Fairbairn: A Contemporary Introduction" (Routledge, 2024)
In this concise and introductory book, David Celani examines the work of Ronald Fairbairn, one of the pioneers of Object Relations Theory. Ronald Fairbairn: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2025) adopts a unique approach to Fairbairn’s work and legacy. Organizing the book thematically, Celani makes connections between Fairbairn’s disparate and often convoluted papers, offering the reader a
Introducing The Critical Edition of the Works of C. G. Jung
"Princeton University Press is thrilled to share news of a major new initiative: the publication of The Critical Edition of the Works of C. G. Jung. As the longtime publisher of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung in North America, PUP is honored to be global publisher of the Critical Edition, having recently secured world language rights and the support from the Foundation of the Works of C. G. Jun
Misogynoir and the Psychic Life of Race: Projective Identification, Cultural Authority, and the Black Feminine
The discussion explored the concept of “misogynoir” and its impact on Black women, including the ways in which societal expectations and cultural biases affect their experiences in leadership roles and in positions of authority.
Moya Bailey’s (2021) definition of this term was described. It combines misogyny and anti-Black racism but is a distinct phenomenon that highlights how the experiences of
Jane Elizabeth Dougherty, "Narrating Irish Female Development, 1916-2018" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)
Narrating Irish Female Development, 1916-2018 (Edinburgh UP, 2024) studies narratives of Irish female and feminized development, arguing that these postmodern narratives present Irish female maturation as disordered and often deliberately disorderly. The first full-length study of the Irish female coming of age story, the book develops a feminist psychoanalytic narratology, derived from the bela
Jan Borowicz, "Perverse Memory and the Holocaust: A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Polish Bystanders" (Routledge, 2024)
Today I interviewed Jan Borowicz about Perverse Memory and the Holocaust: A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Polish Bystanders (Routledge, 2024).
"The assumptions of my book rely on a simple thesis: indifference to violence is impossible and that the primal scene for Polish culture is the experience of Nazism. In Poland we have still a humanitarian crisis by our border. And there is a tiny minorit
Psychoanalytic Defenses and the Battle Over America's Classrooms
This episode delves into the intense conflicts surrounding race, history, and education in America, asking why classrooms have become such volatile battlegrounds. Moving beyond surface-level political or ideological debates, two psychoanalysts, Drs. Karyne Messina and Felecia Powell-Williams apply some of the tools of psychoanalysis to uncover the deeper, often unconscious, psychological forces at
Gohar Homayounpour, "Persian Blues, Psychoanalysis and Mourning" (Routledge, 2022)
In this episode, Matthew Pieknik and Christopher Russell speak with Gohar Homayounpour about her book Persian Blues, Psychoanalysis and Mourning (Routledge, 2023)
Psychoanalysis is, Homayounpour tells us early in the interview, “a profession for dreamers, for people who don't know what to do with themselves. for freaks. This is not a profession for people in suits at universities who have a clear
What it Means to Forget
The recent removal of information about Black, Indigenous, and female military personnel from the Arlington National Cemetery’s website exemplifies how cancel culture intersects with broader societal dynamics, particularly in the context of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Under directives from the Department of Defense, pages highlighting notable veterans, such as Colin Powell,
Richard Reichbart, "The Anatomy of a Psychotic Experience: A Personal Account of Psychosis and Creativity" (Ipbooks, 2022)
In Anatomy of a Psychotic Experience (Ipbooks, 2022), psychoanalyst Richard Reichbart recounts a psychotic experience when he was in his thirties juxtaposing an account written a few years after the experience with reflections made decades later. This unique work captures both the subjective experience of a particular kind of psychosis, and the analytic interpretation of that experience.
"He graph
Adrian Keith Perkel, "Unlocking the Nature of Human Aggression: A Psychoanalytic and Neuroscientific Approach" (Routledge, 2023)
Today I began my discussion with Dr. Adrian Perkel about his new book Unlocking The Nature of Human Aggression: A Psychoanalytic and Neuroscientific Approach (Routledge, 2024)
“Aggression is to the mind what the immune system is to the body. It doesn’t seek the fight.” With this perfect mind-body analogy Dr. Perkel proposes a clear way to think theoretically and work clinically with aggression. T
When People Can't Listen
Dr. Karyne Messina, host of this series, and Dr. Felecia Powell-Williams, the co-host, talked about what happens when people can’t listen. They discussed events that occurred at the Annual Conference of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) that took place in San Francisco earlier this month and the half time show at Super Bowl 59.
Dr. Powell-Williams, who attend the conference, said she
Alfie Bown, "Post-Comedy" (Polity, 2025)
Not so long ago, comedy and laughter were a shared experience of relief, as Freud famously argued. At their best, ribbing, roasting, piss-taking and insulting were the foundation of a kind of universal culture from which friendship, camaraderie and solidarity could emerge.
Now, comedy is characterized by edgy humour and misplaced jokes that provoke personal and social anxiety, causing divisive cul
Peter Shabad, "Passion, Shame, and the Freedom to Become: Seizing the Vital Moment in Psychoanalysis" (Routledge, 2024)
Passion, Shame, and the Freedom to Become: Seizing the Vital Moment in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2025), by Peter Shabad, examines how humans can overcome feelings of shame through self‑acceptance and regain their innate passion and freedom to grow.
Shabad examines in detail how self-shaming and passivity are intertwined with the fatalism of self-pity, envy, resentment, and ultimately, regret for
Eugene W. Holland, "Perversions of the Market: Sadism, Masochism, and the Culture of Capitalism" (SUNY Press, 2024)
Perversions of the Market: Sadism, Masochism, and the Culture of Capitalism (SUNY Press, 2024) argues that capitalism fosters sadism and masochism--not as individual psychological proclivities but as widespread institutionalized patterns of behavior. The book is divided into two parts: one historical and the other theoretical. In the first, Eugene W. Holland shows how, as capital becomes global in
Jamieson Webster, "On Breathing: Care in a Time of Catastrophe" (Catapult, 2025)
A few moments after birth we begin to use our lungs for the first time. From then on, we must continue breathing for as long as we are alive. And although this mostly happens unconsciously, in a society plagued by anxiety, climate change, environmental racism, and illness, there are more and more instances that “teach us about the privilege that is breathing.” Why do we so easily forget the air th
Trump, Anti-DEI and Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms
In this episode my co-host and I had planned to talk about how the new Trump administration could create unity in America. The episode title had been, “Starting with a Clean Slate: How the Trump administration could create unity in America.” By starting anew, without a political agenda, we intended to explore how a new sense of community and pride in America could evolve. However, after the group
Carl Waitz, "Youth Mental Health Crises and the Broken Social Link: A Freudian-Lacanian Perspective" (Routledge, 2024)
Today I spoke to Dr. Carl Waitz about his new book Youth Mental Health Crises and the Broken Social Link: A Freudian-Lacanian Perspective (Routledge, 2024).
“The kids are not ok” blurbs Patricia Gherovici in her endorsement of Dr. Waitz’ necessary new book. We know this. On the weekend we recorded this interview (February 9, 2025) the New York Times published research[1] showing national trendline
Hila Yahalom, "A Psychoanalytic Reflection on Narcissistic Parenthood and its Ramifications: The Forgotten Echo" (Routledge, 2024)
A Psychoanalytic Reflection on Narcissistic Parenthood and its Ramifications: The Forgotten Echo (Routledge, 2024) proposes a new perspective on narcissism, focusing on its destructive impact within relationships.
Psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Hila Yahalom discusses the patterns and ramifications of traumatizing upbringing by narcissistic parents, exploring the resulting development of a defensiv
Ahron Friedberg, "Life Studies in Psychoanalysis: Faces of Love" (Routledge, 2023)
Life Studies in Psychoanalysis: Faces of Love (Routledge, 2023), by Dr. Ahron Friedberg, consists of four psychoanalytic studies each representing a patient's course of treatment over several years. These studies demonstrate how love, in an array of forms, is refracted through the process of psychoanalysis, which unfolds over time and reveals the complexities of human desire. The cases presented h
Udo Hock, "The Enigmatic Messages of the Other: On the Work of Jean Laplanches" (Psychosozial-Verlag, 2024)
Udo Hock's Die rätselhaften Botschaften des Anderen. Zum Werk Jean Laplanches (The enigmatic messages of the other. On the work of Jean Laplanche), came out in 2024 with Psychosozial-Verlag, and collectes nine essays that Hock published over the past twenty years. Published in 2024 to celebrate Laplanche's centennial, these papers are a crucial contribution to Laplanche studies from one of its key
Hélène Tessier, "The Vocabulary of Laplanche" (PUF, 2024)
In Vocabulaire de Laplanche (PUF, 2024), edited by the renowned scholar and analyst, Hélène Tessier, several of the key readers of Jean Laplanche's work propose what is nothing short of a revelation for Laplanche studies. Theirs is a vocabulary that provides a concise and accessible dictionary of key Laplanchian terms, inviting readers of Laplanche's work to engage with the French psychoanalyst's
Jan Abram, "The Surviving Object: Psychoanalytic Clinical Essays on Psychic Survival-Of-The-Object" (Routledge, 2021)
Clinician and psychoanalyst Jan Abram proposes and elaborates the dual concept of an intrapsychic surviving and non surviving object. She extends Winnicottian technique by highlighting the centrality of the analysand playing with the object. Across eight chapters she develops this theory of survival, while also exploring the terror of non-survival, and its implications for psychic health, the fear
Amrita Narayanan, "Women's Sexuality and Modern India: In a Rapture of Distress" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Amrita Narayanan is a practicing Clinical Psychologist (Psy.D. 2007) and Psychoanalyst (Indian Psychoanalytic Society, 2019). She is the author of Women's Sexuality and Modern India: In a Rapture of Distress (Oxford University Press, 2023). She was the Editor of and essayist in The Parrots of Desire: 3000 years of Erotica in India (Aleph Books, 2018) a collection of poems, short prose and fiction
Roberta Satow, "Our Time Is Up" (Ipbooks, 2024)
Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Roberta Satow about her new book Our Time Is Up (Ipbooks, 2024).
In 1895 Freud noticed that his case histories “read like short stories and that, as one might say, they lack the serious stamp of science.” What Dr. Satow has written works in the other direction; a novel that reads like case histories. She has accomplished the difficult task of represent
Negative Life
Steven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay talk about negative life, which names the misalignment of individual and species survival, as a condition of thought and film. In developing this concept, they shed light on the gaps within the rhetoric of entanglement, and push against ethics and politics that insist on the values of human and nonhuman relations. Negative life already inheres in existing
Joel Whitebook, "Freud: An Intellectual Biography" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
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
Camille Robcis, "Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
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
Frederick Crews, "Freud: The Making of an Illusion" (Picador, 2018)
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
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