After Lacan
After LacanOne of the most striking features of Lacanian psychoanalytic literature, as compared with the literature of other analytic schools, is its amazing dearth…
Against Adaptation
Against AdaptationDue to what is commonly referred to as Lacan’s “notorious difficulty,” the vast majority of secondary literature produced by Lacanian scho…
André Green at the Squiggle Foundation
André Green at the Squiggle FoundationThere was a time when the mention of French psychoanalysis conjured images of the ever-flamboyant Jacques Lacan. Lacan has been the poster boy, the image of Francophilic psychoanalytic thought for quite some time. Lacan’s house of mirrors approach to…
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Anna Freud
Anna FreudTo most people Anna Freud's name is only recognizable because it brings to mind her father: Sigmund Freud. Last summer, I toured Freud's house in London.…
Approaching Psychoanalysis
Approaching PsychoanalysisINTO THE SECOND CENTURY In Approaching Psychoanalysis: An Introductory Course, David L. Smith exceeds his goal of writing "an accessible, non-do…
Between Emotion and Cognition
Between Emotion and CognitionJoseph Newirth's book puts forward a creative image of the mind where psychoanalysis does not succumb to conscious and rational thought processes, but i…
Beyond Gender
Beyond GenderAs this volume's title suggests, Paul Verhaeghe's collection of essays on various aspects of Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis is unified by a basic, underlyin…
Beyond Sexuality
Beyond SexualityMost people can't comprehend why anyone would risk death for a good fuck (as) unsafe sex appears as inconceivably self-destructive behavior.' Complex qu…
Building on Bion
Building on BionWilfred Bion could be seen as the perfect, if reluctant, symbol for the best in contemporary psychoanalytic thought. He shows respect for his past (both…
Cassandra's Daughter
Cassandra's DaughterCassandra’s Daughter is a book worth reading. Joseph Schwartz gives clear–sometimes brilliant–readings of a variety of psychoanalys…
Cherishment
CherishmentWhen thinking of descriptors or key concepts related to psychoanalysis, I suspect one seldom thinks of love. My guess is that sex, aggression or even hat…
Confusion of Tongues
Confusion of TonguesThe "Trauma model" and the "Seduction model" are a frequent topic in contemporary psychoanalysis. Many works have recently been devot…
Crucial Choices, Crucial Changes
Crucial Choices, Crucial ChangesThis is a bad book which I found highly irritating. To support this judgment fully would require a lengthy article if not an entire book, and the work me…
Darwin's Worms
Darwin's WormsNot many books leave you with a substantial thought that lingers in your mind well after you have read them; fewer books endow you with an insight that impa…
Dispatches from the Freud Wars
Dispatches from the Freud WarsDispatches from the Freud Wars consists of six of John Forrester's recent essays on Freudian psychoanalysis and its cultural implications, as well as an…
Does the Woman Exist?
Does the Woman Exist?The title question of this book leads one to suppose the Paul Verhaeghe will solve the oft-mentioned "problem" of Freud's theory: his sexist attit…
Dreaming by the Book
Dreaming by the BookOver a century after its publication, Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams maintains a firm position in the textual canon of the Wes…
Equals
EqualsEquals is a collection of essays, made up of three distinct parts: "Equals", "Under Psychoanalysis" and "Characters"…
Errant SelvesEthics and the Discovery of the Unconscious
Ethics and the Discovery of the UnconsciousThe intent of this book is to give the reader both a background in the history of ethics from Plato and Aristotle to the present day as well as to show the…
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Feminism and Its Discontents
Feminism and Its DiscontentsAcademics, like many professionals, are schooled in the business of nuanced deconstruction. In graduate school, for example, we learn theoretical tricks of…
Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Reasearch and Adult Treatment
Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Reasearch and Adult TreatmentIn Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Adult Treatment, Beatrice Beebe, Steven Knoblauch, Justin Rustin, and Dorienne Sorter aim to…
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Four Lessons of Psychoanalysis
Four Lessons of PsychoanalysisPerhaps the best way to review an introductory book of this kind is to demonstrate the clarity of the picture which it gives us of its topic, Lacanian ps…
Fratricide in the Holy Land
Fratricide in the Holy LandThis book tries to make a case for the legitimacy, admissibility, and usefulness of a certain kind of psychoanalytic psychohistory, by attempting to show…
Freud
FreudJacques Sedat's Freud -- translated here by Susan Fairfield -- is a brief, chronological and very reliable introduction to the essentials of Freud's psychoanalysis. Its chronological architectonic is far from its only innovation, though. It also gives…
Freud
FreudReading a new book about Freud initially leaves a reader with a feeling much like entering McDonalds: how can this meal be any different than the last? While in McDonalds, this consistency is highly prized and expected, in the world of books,…
Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience
Freud and the Question of PseudoscienceFreud is Dead, Long Live Freud! Arguing about Causality and Change in Psychotherapy Though there are many useful aspec…
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Freud As Philosopher
Freud As PhilosopherIn 1991, Richard Boothby's first book appeared--Death and Desire: Psychoa…
Freud's Answer
Freud's AnswerIf, as is increasingly clear, Freudian psychoanalysis is neither scientifically respectable nor therapeutically efficacious, what exactly was Freud up to…
Going Sane
Going SanePhilosophers of a linguistic bent know that some concepts are best clarified in terms of their opposites. It is very hard to say what justice is, but if…
Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life
Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of LifePlato's myth of the cave tells us of people who live inside a cave without realising it, and who think that the shadows they see on the cave walls are the w…
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Hate and Love in Psychoanalytical Institutions
Hate and Love in Psychoanalytical InstitutionsIn this book, Jurgen Reeder, a Swedish psychoanalyst, discusses training in psychoanalysis and its possible flaws. He does this in a lengthy and highly…
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Heinz Kohut
Heinz KohutSay what you will about psychoanalysis, it has attracted a large number of brilliant people into its ranks. And what would you say about somebody who single-handedly created a new psychoanalytic tradition, and started that when he was 55 years old? That i…
Heinz Kohut
Say what you will about psychoanalysis, it has attracted a large number of brilliant people into its ranks. And what would you say about somebody who sin…
Hidden Minds
Hidden MindsAs the title suggests, the author (a practicing clinical psychologist) starts with the assumption that the unconscious exists, and then proceeds from there.…
Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis
Crawling out of the wreckage of psychoanalysis; triumphantly? There are so many well catalogued reasons to disparage psychoanalytic theory and pra…
Imagine There's No Woman
Imagine There's No Woman"[...] being French does not automatically entitle one to understand Lacan" (62). This quotation about this French psychoanalyst makes clear o…
Intimate Revolt
Intimate RevoltIn the first volume of “The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis” (entitled…
Introduction à Sigmund Freud
Introduction à Sigmund FreudIn the opening pages, Andreas Mayer (who made himself known with Dreaming by the Book, a beautiful study written with Lydia Marinelli) announces a profoundly innovative approach to Freud, which would distinguish it from the many existing studies: his book
Jacques Lacan
Jacques LacanIf you've ever stared at a Lacanian text and wondered when the jargon would start to make sense, you will understand the need for an accessible primer to…
Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practice of Psychoanalysis
Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practice of PsychoanalysisIn Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practice of Psychoanalysis, author Dany Nobus seeks to accomplish three related aims: one, to make Lacan (who is mo…
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Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology
Jung and the Making of Modern PsychologyThis book has been envisaged as a cubist portrait, and presents a multifaceted approach to a multifaceted work. Decisive stimuli for its form and structu…
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Jung Stripped Bare
Jung Stripped BareThis book is more about Jungians then about Jung himself. We could say that its main concern is critical deconstruction of some of the cardinal Jungia…
Lacan
LacanReading Lacan is far away from being easy and without any serious problems. His highly personal style is hermetic, often surrealistic. The logic of his thinking is rather idiosyncratic, lucid and original, but not easy to follow. One of the most impor…
Lacan
LacanIn developing his particular renewal of psychoanalytic theory, Lacan established a dialogue with some of the most important thinkers of the Western philosophical and artistic tradition. The links between Lacanian thought and authors such as Plato, Aristo…
Lacan
In developing his particular renewal of psychoanalytic theory, Lacan established a dialogue with some of the most important thinkers of the Western phil…
Lacan and Contemporary Film
Lacan and Contemporary FilmThe editors of this work provide an introduction both to Lacan's works and to film criticism. Despite the ideological boost, it is unlikely that readers…
Lacan in America
Lacan in AmericaAnti-American diatribes repeatedly surface in Lacan’s teachings. For Lacan, heaping scorn on the “American way of life” is the obvious, ap…
Lacan Today
Lacan TodayLacanian psychoanalysis is well known in our days as one of the most complicated traditions in the contemporary theory. Apart from its being so complicat…
Lacan's Seminar on Anxiety
Lacan's Seminar on AnxietyReading Lacan is far from easy and without any serious problems. His highly personal style is hermetic, too often surrealistic. The logic of his thinking…
Law
LawDavid Ingram's Law: Key Concepts in Philosophy captures virtually the entire realm of modern thought that forms the philosophical basis for…
Learning from Our Mistakes
Learning from Our MistakesPatrick Casement is prominent British psychoanalyst and psychotherapist. Before this recent book, he had published two more books: On Learning from th…
Mad Men and Medusas
Mad Men and MedusasThe hysteric, with limbs dragging or spasmodically twitching, paralyzed by a loss of speech, or trapped in an intricate web of lies, asthmatic, breathles…
Male Female Email
Male Female EmailIn MALE FEMALE e-mail: The Struggle for Relatedness in a Paranoid Society, Michael Civin evaluates computer-mediated communication in terms of psycho…
Melanie Klein
Melanie KleinIt seems that the depth of Julia Kristeva's thinking -- and in this case of her reading as well -- resists any reviewing. To do justice to a book of hers…
Mental SlaveryMourning and Modernity
Mourning and ModernityThis book is about psychoanalysis and modern culture. It is mainly concerned with the very important questions of gender, parenting, and ontogenesis. Dev…
Movies and the Mind
Movies and the MindSometime around 1895 both the modern cinema and modern psychoanalysis came into being, and they have had a mutual, not to say incestuous, fascination eve…
Nocturnes
NocturnesPaul Lippman, psychoanalyst, is also an outstanding writer. It is almost too bad that in this book speaks primarily to his peers, for his lyrical and jar…
On Being Normal and Other Disorders
On Being Normal and Other DisordersOn Being Normal is a sparkling book that will likely engulf readers' attention with flames of intense scholarship, with respect to psychodiagno…
On Belief
On BeliefConsistent with the style of many of his recent works, Slavoj Zizek's On Belief is a frenetic tour rapidly ranging across the varied landscapes of ps…
On Incest
On IncestOn Incest is a collected volume of six essays written by practicing analysts and psychiatrists from Europe and South America. Emerging from the pa…
On Not Being Able to Sleep
On Not Being Able to SleepJacqueline Rose is an elegant, intelligent writer and thinker, who links ideas and pulls in references from many and varied sources in a way that creates…
On the Freud Watch
On the Freud WatchLet every man in mankind's frailty Consider his last day; and let none Presume on his good fortune until he find…
On the Way Home
On the Way HomeOn the Way Home features four writers talking with psychoanalysts varyiously interested in literature.One, Waddell, has a PhD in classics and li…
Opera's Second Death
Opera's Second DeathEvidently, both Mozart and Wagner were Lacanians without explicitly knowing it. All of their operas, at the most foundational of levels, deal with…
Phenomology & Lacan on Schizophrenia, After the Decade of the Brain
Phenomology & Lacan on Schizophrenia, After the Decade of the BrainIn 1972, while Lacan himself was still in the process of forging his large and complex conceptual apparatus, a book entitled La psychose appeared.…
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Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience
Psychoanalysis and NeuroscienceA collection of papers rather than a cohesive book, divided into four parts, the collection attempts to provide a neuron-anatomical-functional base for w…
Psychoanalysis and the Philosophy of Science
Psychoanalysis and the Philosophy of SciencePsychoanalysis and the Philosophy of Science:````Collected Papers of Benjamin B. Rubinstein, M.D.````Edited and Annotated by Robert R. Holt, Ph.D.``About the reviewer:``Brent Dean Robbins is a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology``and a part-time instru
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Psychoanalysis as Biological Science
Psychoanalysis as Biological ScienceIn this book the psychoanalyst John E. Gedo takes a position in the quarrel between two reciprocally incompatible views on psychoanalysis, i.e. the biolo…
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Psychoanalysis in Focus
Psychoanalysis in FocusCritical considerations of the basic presuppositions of psychoanalytic doctrine could be seen as the main topic of recently published Livingston Smith's…
Putnam Camp
Putnam CampThe purpose of George Prochnik's book is manifold. On the first level, it is a history of Freud's travel to America and his life-long ambivalence…
Re-Inventing the Symptom
Re-Inventing the SymptomRe-Inventing the Symptom is a collection of essays dealing with the last period of Jacques Lacan's teaching, with particular emphasis on his 1975-…
Reading Seminar XX
Reading Seminar XXIn 1995, the State University of New York Press published a collection of essays on Jacques Lacan’s famous eleventh seminar of 1964 (The Four Fun…
Reinventing the Soul
Reinventing the SoulRuti's Reinventing the Soul is a brilliant move in the game of soul-searching that philosophers have been engaged in for centuries to know what hu…
Relationality
RelationalityIn this book, Stephen Mitchell, the leading theorist of the relational movement in psychoanalysis, explores connections between earlier psychoanalytic persp…
Revolt, She Said
Revolt, She SaidIn a collection of interviews entitled Revolt, She Said, Julia Kristeva performs quite an extraordinary feat: she somehow manages to simultaneousl…
Secrets of the Soul
Secrets of the SoulIn his Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis, Zaretsky chronicles and interprets this history from its beginnings i…
Serious Shopping
Serious ShoppingYou can also buy this book directly from the publisher: see the Free Association Books web``page
Sex on the Couch
Sex on the CouchIn the frenzied atmosphere of the contemporary word dislocation, aimlessness, and alienation have replaced the suffocating rigidity and social propriety…
Sexuation
SexuationIn reply to the question of how humans become sexed beings, it is now commonplace to hear the retort that this is either a process open to subjective pos…
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund FreudIt would be an unusual family in which the parents wanted a child to know about Sigmund Freud and his theory of psychoanalysis. But for such families, th…
Soul Murder Revisited
Soul Murder RevisitedLeonard Shengold is a practicing psychoanalyst affiliated with the Psychoanalytic Institute at New York University. Soul Murder Revisited continue…
Spirit, Mind, and Brain
Spirit, Mind, and BrainA psychoanalyst with neurological avocations, Ostow proposes spiritual experience as comprising awe, upper-cased Spirituality, and mysticism psychodynami…
Strangers to Ourselves
Strangers to OurselvesWith the inevitable waning of behavioral psychology beginning in the 1950's, psychology desperately floundered about looking for an acceptable empirical…
Subjective Experience and the Logic of the Other
Subjective Experience and the Logic of the OtherThis book is built on the paradox. It is meant to be an acceptable exposition of psychoanalytic theory and technique inspired and by the original struct…
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Taboo Subjects
Taboo SubjectsThis book is about gender and culture (American culture), it is about psychoanalysis and literature (American literature). Its main concern is dealing wi…
The Art of the Subject
The Art of the SubjectAny serious thinking about (classical or modern) psychoanalysis implies really serious thinking about some concrete personalities and psychoanalysts. Psy…
The Brain and the Inner World
The Brain and the Inner WorldMark Solms seems a driven man. In his eyes (and in this case, also those of fellow researcher Oliver Turnbull), Psychoanalysis is dying. In his new text,…
The Cambridge Companion to Lacan
The Cambridge Companion to LacanThe Cambridge Companions are a success. Not only has the original series, Companions to Literature, grown to over 100 publications since i…
The Challenge for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy
The Challenge for Psychoanalysis and PsychotherapySee the publisher's description of the contents of this book.
Read the full review of The Challenge for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy
The Clinical Lacan
The Clinical LacanThe introduction to Joël Dor's The Clinical Lacan promises that this book (as part of the book series The Lacanian Clinical Field) helps…
The Colonization Of Psychic Space
The Colonization Of Psychic SpaceThis book is about psychoanalysis. Or, if we want to be more precise, this book is about something that psychoanalysis might become. Strictly speaking, t…
The Couch and the Tree
The Couch and the TreeIn the introduction to his very ambitious book, The Couch and the Tree, Anthony Molino notes that in 1995 there were only 23 articles or books listed…
The Cruelty of Depression
The Cruelty of DepressionWhat to say about a book like this? Michael Vincent Miller, in the foreword which is also quoted on the back cover, writes, If Prozac works, do we really…
The Fall Of An Icon
The Fall Of An IconJoel Paris's account of the rise and fall of psychoanalysis within North American academic psychiatry provides an interesting and informative overview th…
The Freud Encyclopedia
The Freud EncyclopediaThe Freud Encyclopedia is a physically large book with 641 pages. I have had it on my bookshelf for the past year, planning to use it as the nee…
The Freud Wars
The Freud WarsThis book is about some very important heuristic consequences of (Freud's) psychoanalytic theory. How psychoanalytic thinking can be justified? Is it…
The Fright of Real Tears
The Fright of Real TearsIn this series of lectures delivered in London in 1998, Slavoj Zizek devotes the bulk of his efforts to unveiling the conceptual significance of the cine…
The Gift of Therapy
The Gift of TherapyFor the general reader interested in psychotherapy, there is no more interesting writer than Irvin D. Yalom. The author of…
The Knotted Subject
The Knotted SubjectElisabeth Bronfen is Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Zurich. The title of the book refers to the naval, a knotted "wou…
The Mind According to Shakespeare
The Mind According to ShakespeareIt looks like the history of psychoanalysis can be written in the form of a history of various readings of Shakespeare, and particularly Hamlet.…
The Mythological Unconscious
The Mythological UnconsciousAdams’ Mythological Unconscious, a compelling demonstration of his version of the Jungian method of amplification, is genuinely a delight to…
The New Psychoanalysis
The New PsychoanalysisMeadow's book is an excellent study in the origins and theories that inform modern psychoanalysis. She substantiates said theories with her own experien…
The Power of Feelings
The Power of FeelingsThe book discusses foundational issues in theoretical psychoanalysis. Nancy J. Chodorow claims that the starting place for developing a theoretical stance i…
The Psychoanalytic Movement
The Psychoanalytic MovementErnest Gellner's The Psychoanalytic Movement has become, together with such books as Adolf Grünbaum's, or Frank Crewes's Memory Wars, one…
The Psychoanalytic Mystic
The Psychoanalytic MysticAfter a relatively tough time in the eighties, it could be argued that psychoanalytic theory is experiencing a present day renaissance. More sophisticate…
The Seminar of Moustafa Safouan
The Seminar of Moustafa SafouanMoustafa Safouan is one of the first generation of Lacan’s students, a participant in le Séminaire from its inception in the early 1950s…
The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt
The Sense and Non-Sense of RevoltJulia Kristeva’s choice of title is apt in a way that she herself probably doesn’t intend. Parts of this book make good sense, but, as is too o…
The Social History of the Unconscious
The Social History of the UnconsciousI have to start this review with expressions of puzzlement. I believe that I have never written more question marks on the margins of a book. More precis…
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The Symmetry of God
The Symmetry of GodSee``this book listed at the Free Association Books site
The Tragedy of the Self
The Tragedy of the SelfJust from the title, it is clear that Greif's book on Heinz Kohut is unusual. Although many books and papers have been written on Kohut's theoretical standp…
The Unsayable
The UnsayableAre there things that are unsayable? What would it mean to say them? To utter the forbidden words? To give voice to thoughts so terrible, so inexpressibl…
Umbr(a)
Umbr(a)As one of the many who in initial efforts to comprehend the writings of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan have been driven to near despair, I can report that I…
Understanding Dissidence and Controversy in the History of Psychoanalysis
Understanding Dissidence and Controversy in the History of PsychoanalysisAt first glance, the idea of dissidence in science seems impossible. The whole point of rigorous scientific methodology makes it impossible to think in t…
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Walking Heads
Walking HeadsIt could be very hard to work with such patients that are radically alienated from their basic bodily feelings. These patients are not autistic, or psych…
Way Beyond Freud
Way Beyond FreudThe 13 contributors to this volume engage the reader in a stimulating exchange and dialogue about postmodern turn in psychoanalysis. They advocate, criti…
What Does a Woman Want?
What Does a Woman Want?This book is published by Other Press, the exciting new press featuring many titles in psychoanalysis coming from outside the dominant paradigms in Anglo-Am…
When the Body Speaks
When the Body SpeaksMara Sidoli, a child and adult analyst specializing in infant observation and the study of mother-infant relationships, explains in her introduction that th…
Where Do We Fall When We Fall in Love?
Where Do We Fall When We Fall in Love?Looking Beyond the Libido for the Lost Ego Instincts In the preface to Where Do We Fall When We Fall in Love, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl sum…
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Whose Freud?
Whose Freud?Whose Freud?: The Place of Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture is a collection of papers from a conference held at the Whitney Humanities Cente…
Why Psychoanalysis?
Why Psychoanalysis?Few people need reminding that Freudian psychoanalysis, a little over a century after its invention, finds itself in a perilous position. In the current…
Wittgenstein on Freud and Frazer
Wittgenstein on Freud and FrazerWhy is a raven like a writing-desk? (asked Lewis Carroll). Poe wrote on both (answered Sam Loyd). Is what Sigmund Freud and James Frazer have in common i…