Abstract
We are delighted to welcome some additions to our editorial staff of the Book Review. Gretchen Hermes, our newly appointed manuscripts editor, brings a depth of unique experience and skills at the nexus of psychoanalysis, basic and clinical research, clinical practice (especially in the area of substance use disorders), and the humanities. You will find the mark of her careful and thoughtful work throughout these pages. Elizabeth Hamlin, our newly named acquisitions editor, brings a breadth of knowledge of psychoanalytic literature and analytically adjacent topics, and has a keen eye for the creative and expansive mission of the Book Review. We are also pleased to welcome Konstantinos Taliourids, Book Review candidate liaison, whose enthusiasm, passion for psychoanalysis, and great fund of knowledge will enrich these pages.
As we broaden our editorial group, our vision for the Book Review is to continue to invite spirted and creative conversations about current analytic thinking, reflective engagement, creative approaches, and intellectual challenge. We welcome new voices as well as familiar ones, for analytic dialogue, exploration, and fresh understanding. We offer an opportunity to discover new titles, broad areas of study and interest, and novel interpretations of familiar concepts.
We are also pleased to introduce you to a new occasional column we’re calling “What I’m Reading Now.” In these brief pieces, analysts will reflect on books that have captivated them, offering an analytic window into their “nightstand” volumes, sharing the unique pleasures of engaging with excellent writing by powerful literary voices probing complex contemporary themes in literature, fiction, nonfiction, the arts. As analysts, what moves us in a text? How do our favorite books enrich us, and allow us a pathway to a new experience, insight, or recognition? Reading good writing is a joy unto itself; reading good analytical writing, like reading poetry and fiction, heightens what Thomas Ogden (2006) describes as “one’s capacity to be aware of and alive to the effects created by the way language is being used” (p. 1976). Ogden continues, “Words in a story—whether it be a work of fiction or an analytic narrative (which is also necessarily a fiction)—create experiences to be lived by the reader (Ogden, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c).” “What I’m Reading Now” invites you to explore reading with a psychoanalytic bent. The first of these essays will appear in 72/2.
Book Essay
In “A Blue Guitar, Reflections on Disclosure and Reticence (Inspired by Jeffrey Berman on Norman Holland, 2021),” Ellen Handler Spitz offers a literary critical essay examining Jeffrey Berman’s thoughtful and deeply personal 2021 biography of Normal Holland, titled Norman N. Holland: The Dean of American Psychoanalytic Literary Critics. In it, she centers the question of what constitutes the criteria for psychoanalytically informed literary criticism. Handler Spitz considers Berman’s work to richly explore “the value of disclosure versus reticence in its relation to truth” and addresses the nature of self-disclosure in psychoanalytic inquiry and its relation to literary criticism. Handler Spitz leaves us with a complex reflection on the nature of truth and subjectivity: “Unlike science,” she writes, “music, art, and philosophy do not progress. ‘What is truth?’ ‘Where are the boundaries between myself and another?’ ‘Is all knowledge good?’ The questions perdure. They are as viable today as ever before.”
Book Reviews
Topics in Psychoanalysis
In her thoughtful review of Boundaries, Boundary Crossings, and Boundary Violations, Kristen Beesley offers a reflection on this comprehensive and nuanced collection of essays on the topic of boundary crossings and violations. Beesley leads us through the combination of confusion, hurt, anger, and pain that arises in the face of such events, and ultimately to the deeper question of our individual and collective determination—and its failures—to refrain from violations. She writes, “Levine and his contributors invite us into a conversation about what stops us, instead of the less useful question why do we want to?” From individual, historical, social, and cultural perspectives to an inquiry into the nature of our own analytic communities, Beesley explores “the chilling question of whether patients of psychoanalysis are particularly vulnerable to being victims of transgressions, or if analysts are particularly in danger of tempting transgressions.” Beesley reflects that in Levine’s excellent collection, each chapter in its own way boldly confronts the reader with the uncomfortable truth that “a good-enough training environment or personal analysis alone does not provide a guarantee of safety against transgression.” Beesley writes that Levine’s volume “offers the opportunity for the reader to grapple with the collective and historical impact of boundary transgressions within the field and the crucial role that institutions and societies play in prevention, justice, and repair.”
Laura Whitman discusses the importance and complexity of child and adolescent psychoanalysis through the review of two volumes: Parent Work Casebook and Adolescent Casebook. Her review of these volumes emphasizes the pragmatic nature of child analytic work, involving various techniques beyond traditional psychoanalytic methods. The case studies highlighted in the volumes illustrate the intricate dynamics of parent-child relationships, developmental challenges, and the effectiveness of psychoanalytic interventions in addressing a wide range of issues from trauma to behavioral problems. The authors advocate for continued parent involvement in treatment, stressing its crucial role in facilitating positive outcomes. Additionally, Whitman spotlights Novick and Novick’s emphasis on the need to understand the unique challenges that adolescent development presents in therapeutic settings. Overall, Whitman’s review underscores the value of psychoanalysis as a transformative and insightful approach to addressing the complexities of childhood and adolescence.
In his thoughtful review, Jeffrey Bernstein discusses Sally Swartz’s important book on the intersection of psychoanalysis and colonialism, Psychoanalysis and Colonialism: A Contemporary Introduction, emphasizing how psychoanalytic theory has historically perpetuated colonialist views. Bernstein describes Swartz’s exploration of how early psychoanalysts like Freud and Jung adopted colonialist perspectives, influencing their understanding of the unconscious and perpetuating problematic notions of “primitivity.” Bernstein takes the reader through Swartz’s argument that these views continue to influence psychoanalysis today, shaping analytic theory and clinical practice. Bernstein underscores Swartz’s calls for a decolonization of psychoanalysis, advocating for a more inclusive and diverse approach that acknowledges and respects differences.
In his review of Joseph Fernando’s volume, A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Trauma: Post-Traumatic Mental Functioning, The Zero Process, and the Construction of Reality, Jerome Blackman offers his insights and reflections on Dr. Fernando’s theoretical viewpoint on trauma, one that is complex, multilayered, and original. In it, Blackman explores Fernando’s concept of “zero process,” which he uses to indicate the experience of psychical overwhelm that renders certain mental functions inoperative, such as aspects of memory, recording and making sense of heightened emotions, and the continuity of object relations. By this, he suggests that the mind, during the event, has stopped operating either with secondary or primary process mechanisms. Dr. Blackman’s review outlines and elucidates Joseph Fernando’s thinking about trauma, taking us through the history, clinical and theoretical underpinnings, current social context, and complex manifestations of trauma.
Applied Psychoanalysis
Sawyier on Goldberg
In his review of Opera on the Couch: Music, Emotional Life, and Unconscious Aspects of Mind, edited by Steven H. Goldberg and Lee Rather, Timothy Sawyier considers the complex and intricate question of applying psychoanalytic theory and insight to understand a work of art. Sawyier cautions that “when thinking psychoanalytically about any artform, one must apply psychoanalytic concepts in the absence of an ongoing clinical process, the traditional court of appeal for psychoanalytic interpretations,” thereby engaging in s speculative process that cannot be verified. Sawyier appreciates the richness and creativity that can emerge out of such analytic endeavors, which offer what he calls a “theoretical playground” for creative thought. As such, despite these complications, he finds much of interest in the authors’ endeavors to “[grapple] with difficult questions of the complex ways psychoanalytic ideas speak to art.”
Collins on Golinelli
In responding to another work of applied psychoanalysis, Paola Golinelli’s Psychoanalytic Reflections on Writing, Cinema and the Arts: Facing Beauty and Loss, Bradley Collins’s poignant essay explores the connection Golinelli makes between beauty and loss. A key touchstone for her exploration, according to Collins, is a quotation from Homer, who wrote that beauty is “the breast which makes us forget our anguish.” She further anchors her reflections in the theorizing of psychoanalysts Bion and Meltzer, and the ideas of an “aesthetic conflict” generated initially by “the infant’s . . . attraction towards the dazzling breast . . . and the maternal face” despite the terror of a deeper hidden reality. Collins invites us directly in to the “aesthetic conflict” as Golinelli explicates it through a quintessential piece of art from antiquity—the Venus de Milo—and the universal enchantment produced by a sculpture without arms. How do we understand this fascination, the imperfection within the perfection as mediated by the cycle of destruction and repair? Collins discusses Golinelli’s analytic approach to the documentary film My Architect (2004), about the celebrated architect Louis Kahn. The film, created by Nathaniel Kahn, who lost his father Louis at the age of 11, invokes an extraordinary image of beauty and loss, captured through “geometrical forms, the light, shadow, water, and sky.”
“Why I Write—To Write is to Create a Universe,” by Daniel Benveniste
In his intimate and intricate reflections on writing, Benveniste reflects on childhood memories that hearken to the delights of discovering treasures—of the type that are precious to children and that give rise to a soaring imagination. He reflects on the particularly pleasurable excitement of finding something tiny that contains an alive universe hidden deep within, or something so gigantic that his childhood self-expands and becomes immensely important. Across the course of his lifetime, the discoveries that Benveniste makes through the process of writing has continued to deepen his understanding of his internal world. He seeks a way to “liberate . . . my own aliveness” trapped within the “neurotic matrix of stone.” Writing allows him to discover, to create, to share, to emerge into the world and, ultimately, become a better, more loving and more appreciative “father” to himself—in essence, a tender guardian of his rich inner life.
