‘Undressing’ by James O’Neill

by | Oct 2, 2023

When James O’Neill started his placement as a trainee psychotherapist at a therapy centre in west London, his first referral was Abraham, a silent and frightened young man in a tightly-zipped, hooded anorak. For the majority of their initial sessions, Abraham hardly spoke. But this book describes how O’Neill gradually gained his trust and learnt of the abuse and violence Abraham had been subjected to as a child that caused him to hide away from the world – barely sleeping, too afraid to get undressed even in the shower. Over the many years they met, Abraham’s unfolding story and bravery inspired O’Neill to confront his own complicated past. Together they achieved something radical. ‘It was Abraham’s idea that his therapist, James O’Neill, should write a book about him. This removes, for the reader, the potential for unease about literary profiteering – sometimes a nagging undertow when reading books by analysts about their patients. O’Neill’s extraordinarily moving book is about mutual disclosure, a shared story between patient and therapist … This is a story about trust … and O’Neill wins ours with his unvarnished prose’ Kate Kellaway, Observer Book of the Week (click for the full review) ‘…[W]riting that is creatively bold… the most rewarding kind of book, in that it frequently stopped me reading to meander off into my own thoughts’ Carol Topolski ‘A brave and moving book which demystifies what it is to be a good and generous therapist’ Nell Dunn ‘O’Neill’s sensibility – in the plain and subtle artfulness of his sentences – is startling in its sympathetic intelligence, in his tact and his straightforwardness’ Adam Phillips Published by Short Books in 2019. Available at most good bookshops or click here to order from Karnac Books  

‘The pictures you paint in the stories you tell, a response’ by Laura Chernaik

by | Jun 20, 2020

Abstract

This paper is a phenomenological and psychoanalytical response to a set of papers. As a psychoanalyst, philosopher, and intellectual historian, I am interested in ‘intention’ in the phenomenological sense, that is, how someone both reaches out to and shapes their world. How does our thinking in this phenomenological way affect our doing of empirical research? How does it affect our psychoanalytical practice? I argue for approaching this kind of critique heterotopically, with an emphasis on other worlds and the relation of these to subjectivity and the unconscious.   The full article can be read here

Narcissism and its Discontents by Julie Walsh

by | Mar 26, 2015

Narcissism and Its Discontents challenges the received wisdom that narcissism is only destructive of good social relations. By building on insights from psychoanalysis and critical theory it puts forward a theorisation of narcissistic sociability which redeems Narcissus from his position as the subject of negative critique. Following a close engagement with Sigmund Freud’s 1914 paper ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’, two further critical moments are considered: first, the mobilisation of narcissism in Anglo-American cultural discourse of the 1970s to 1990s where the term functioned as a descriptor for cultural malaise; and second, the discursive shift from narcissism to melancholia associated with more contemporary critical theory. This book pays particular attention to the paradoxical relation between the narcissist and the social world, identifying in Narcissus a figure whose turning away extends a call to others, and who finds in the vulnerabilities of the self the makings of the social scene.

Narcissism and its Doscontents

Julie Walsh is a member of the SITE and an Institute of Advanced Study Global Research Fellow in the department of Sociology, University of Warwick, UK.

 

 

Joanna Ryan

by | Oct 28, 2013

Class and Psychoanalysis: Landscapes of Inequality, Routledge, 2017

(2011) Research Encounters, Reflexivity and Supervision. International Journal of Social Research Methodology  1–12. With H Elliot and W.Hollway.

(2009) Elision and Disavowal: The Extrusion of Class from Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice. Sitegeist ,no 3,p27-40

(2008) The Privacy of the Bedroom?  Fifty Years on from the Wolfenden Report Reforms. Sitegeist: A Journal of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy. No1.p13-28, Karnac

‘“Class is in you”: An exploration of some social class issues in psychotherapeutic work’, British Journal of Psychotherapy, 2006, 23, 49-63. Reprinted, (2013) with postscript in F. Lowe (ed.), Thinking Space: Promoting Thinking about Race, Culture and Diversity in psychotherapy and Beyond,  London: Karnac

Clinical Implications of Queer Theory, in K. White (ed.), Attachment and Sexuality, (2005), London: Karnac.

(2001) ‘Can Psychoanalysis Understand Homophobia?’, in T. Dean and C. Lane (eds) Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities: Lesbianism and Psychoanalysis  (1993/2003) With N.O’Connor. Virago/ Columbia Univ Press/Karnac

Sex and Love: New Thoughts on Old Contradictions. (1983)  Ed. with S. Cartledge. Women’s Press

The Politics of Mental Handicap (1980/1983/1987) Penguin/FAB