This book’s cover image is a self-portrait painted by the British psychoanalyst and author Marion Milner. Dressed in the painter’s archetypal blue smock, at easel and with palette and brush at hand, Milner rests her gaze intently on the canvas as the viewer catches her in the act of creation. The painting is undated but, given the subject’s youthful appearance, was likely created during M…
I have touched down in the Star Wars franchise on several occa-sions to illustrate a historical paradox I once dared name “Nazi Psychoanalysis.”1 Let me say right off that this study will not look more closely at the Star Wars movies.2 Instead, it will explore a terrain between the science fiction and fantasy genres that the success of George Lucas’s 1977 film illuminated and …
“Psychoanalysis has never claimed to provide a complete theory of human mentality in general.”1 Freud wrote these words in 1914, shortly after his break with Jung. It is indeed true that he never concerned himself with developing an all-embracing system, but rather moved from the analysis of patients to areas of special attention: repression, dreams,…
Aural History is an anti-memoir memoir of encountering devastating grief that uses experimental storytelling to recreate the winding, fractured path of loss and transformation.Written by a thirty-something psychotherapist and queer theorist, Aural History is structured as a sequence of three sections that each use different narrative styles to represent a distinctive stage in the protagonist’…
Psychoanalyst Dr. Karyne E. Messina can't diagnose former President Donald J. Trump. But his behavior matches what's known, in her circles, as projective identification: people who are distinctly uncomfortable with their own thoughts and actions may unconsciously try to dispose of those feeling by blaming others. Instead of taking responsibility, they project, and their victims might not even r…