BRETT KAHR’S TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022
Professor Brett Kahr certainly knows something about the art of authoring books. Over the decades, he has written or edited sixteen volumes and has served as series editor for more than seventy-five further titles.
Most recently, Karnac Books has published his latest volume, Freud’s Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis, the inaugural title in the new “Freud Museum London Series”, undertaken in collaboration with the Freud Museum. This highly pertinent book describes how the great Sigmund Freud survived not one but, rather, six separate pandemics during his own lifetime and yet still managed to thrive. Kahr examines what lessons each of us can learn from Freud about the art of resiliency and the efficacy of what he has come to refer to as “psychological vaccination”.
As Advisory Editor-in-Chief to both Confer Books and Karnac Books, he continues to help colleagues develop their book projects. And, once again, Confer takes great pleasure in having invited Brett to share with us his recommendations of the ten best books of the year.
Brett writes:
My love affair with Karnac Books began when, in 1982, I first set foot in the old shop on Gloucester Road in Southwest Central London and had the privilege to meet the great Harry Karnac himself, who founded the business back in 1950. Although Harry inaugurated his career as a generalist bookseller, he eventually discovered the work of Dr. Donald Winnicott and began to sell various pamphlets and books on infancy and parenthood, which generated much interest in depth psychology. And, in due course, Harry became the world’s leading seller of overtly psychoanalytical publications.
Over the decades, Karnac Books flourished under the leadership of Harry Karnac’s various successors, most recently, Oliver Rathbone, who retired in 2017 to set up his own special press, Aeon Books, devoted to herbal medicine and related topics.
Thankfully, in 2020, Dr. Stephen Setterberg reinaugurated Karnac Books as both a publishing imprint and as a new bookshop, created in collaboration with Confer Limited and Confer Books, and, over the last few years, I have enjoyed the pleasure of contributing to this organisation by introducing many very talented prospective authors to our Publishing Team.
Confer Books and the newly-relaunched Karnac Books – our much-cherished “Publishers of the Mind” – have, over the last three years, produced a marvellous array of titles on a wide range of psychological themes. These beautifully curated volumes will, I know, come to enjoy a very important role in the dissemination of psychotherapeutic thought for years to come.
As readers of this annual column on the Confer website will appreciate, I shall not review titles by Confer Books or Karnac Books – tempting though that may be – even though we have released some terrific books this year, which cover a broad spectrum of vital topics which include: primitive bodily communications; intergenerational racial trauma; queer psychotherapy; couple work; media psychoanalysis; energy psychotherapy; on-line psychotherapy; children in the pandemic; a memoir of Vienna during the 1920s and 1930s; as well as both an excellent biography about the controversial psychoanalyst Masud Khan and, also, the publication of his private Work Books. Please do investigate the Confer Books and Karnac Books website for more information about these recently-released titles as well as the rather impressive backlist and, moreover, the impending publications of 2023 (https://www.karnacbooks.com/ConferAndKarnac.asp).
In the sections of this blog which follow, we have chosen to review titles by other publishers, in the spirit of gratitude towards the wider mental health publishing community. Jane Ryan, the founder of Confer Limited, has always championed what she has described as the need to overcome the “nonsensical antagonism” in the psychotherapeutic field – a discipline beset by too many tribal splits. Hence, in an effort to pay tribute to colleagues and publishers from every arena, I will offer brief celebrations of impressive titles from other houses which, I hope, will offer no shortage of great holiday pleasure.
In addition to my brief encapsulations of the “Top Ten”, I have also chosen to foreground some other great books which have appeared in print during this past year, including two beautiful psychological novels written by colleagues as well as a discussion of three neglected classics, which must not be forgotten.
On 3rd June, 2022, Professor Sophie Freud – one of the many grandchildren of Sigmund Freud – passed away at the age of ninety-seven years. I had the great honour of having met Professor Freud and I found her utterly delightful and warm-hearted. In the wake of her death, I re-read her marvellous 1988 autobiography, My Three Mothers and Other Passions, and I found myself very struck by her comment: “I don’t just read my books, I devour them.” I hope that each of us might benefit from the wisdom of Freud’s brilliant granddaughter – a highly accomplished social worker and psychotherapist in her own right – and that we might all do a bit more devouring of books, thus “upping our game” as mental health practitioners.
Brett’s Top Ten
(We have listed these books in alphabetical order, according to each author’s surname).
Colleagues in the United Kingdom will be very familiar with the extraordinary achievements of Susanna Abse. She served for many years as Chief Executive of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships and, subsequently, of Tavistock Relationships, during which time she expanded the discipline of couple and family psychotherapy and psychoanalysis enormously. Thereafter, she became Chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council and inaugurated many important developments, not least having hosted a regular set of dialogues between clinicians and members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. It pleases me hugely that Abse has now published a wonderful book, encapsulating her many decades of insights about couple work. Tell Me the Truth About Love: 13 Tales from the Therapist’s Couch has already received numerous excellent reviews in national newspapers and on social media, and this engaging, conversationally-written piece of work, aimed at members of the general public, provides immense insight into the complexities of the spousal relationship and offers a detailed portrait of how mental health professionals can help to unearth the underlying conflicts. This book would make a great Christmas present for anyone who has ever participated in an intimate relationship! Unsurprisingly, the publisher will be releasing a paperback version on 26th January, 2023, which, I hope, will reach a very wide audience indeed.
No human being has contributed as much to the published literature of our profession as Professor Salman Akhtar. Extraordinarily, in 2022, Phoenix Publishing House released Akhtar’s one hundredth book! I can happily report that I read Akhtar’s new title, Tales of Transformation: A Life in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, in just one sitting. I simply could not put it down. This gripping memoir offers wonderfully rich and engaging encapsulations of Professor Akhtar’s long, distinguished career in mental health, ranging from his brave championship of psychotherapy in India, during the 1960s, at a time when many regarded the ”talking cure” with suspicion, to his current day contributions as one of the world’s most popular lecturers on numerous vital psychological topics. Beautifully composed, richly illustrated with warm-hearted photographs, and stunningly produced, this book provides wonderful portraits of Akhtar’s encounters with everyone from Masud Khan to Otto Kernberg. Above all, the author has very generously shared his decades of wisdom about the joys and challenges of navigating a career in the psychological professions. I know of no other practitioner who has produced one hundred books (with many more in the pipeline) and I salute this remarkable man for his iconic contributions.
In view of the zillions of books about Sigmund Freud which have appeared over the last several decades, one might imagine that we have absolutely nothing more to discover about the progenitor of the psychotherapeutic profession. But thankfully, many scholars continue to immerse themselves in the Freudian archives and manage to produce fantastic new findings. It pleases me that Dr. Gertie Bögels – an esteemed Dutch psychiatrist and psychoanalyst – has assembled a wonderful collection of Sigmund Freud’s letters and notes to Dr. Jeanne Lampl-de Groot, one of Freud’s sometime analysands and, subsequently, one of the founders of the psychoanalytical community in The Netherlands. Although Lampl-de Groot will be little known to most contemporary clinicians, this great woman had made huge contributions to the development of psychoanalysis in the middle decades of the twentieth century, and it pleases me that Dr. Bögels has kindly shared the rich relationship between these two pioneering figures in the field. This book had already appeared in both Dutch and German editions, but thanks to the excellent work of the translator Kenneth Kronenberg, the new English-language version will help many more colleagues to read these really enlightening documents. Not only does the book reveal the nature of the intimate collaboration between Freud and Lampl-de Groot, but, moreover, it provides us all with many of Freud’s brilliant insights into the unconscious roots of political upheaval. Indeed, if only many more people had detected what Freud described as the “Hitler nonsense” much sooner, our world leaders might have intervened earlier to prevent the spread of the Nazi pandemic. I salute Dr. Bögels for her excellent contribution to Freud studies.
In recent years, it seems that our planet has become more and more angry, indeed ugly, on a daily basis, and many of our governments seem to be exploding far too frequently, with new prime ministers appointed almost every month. How can we possibly begin to understand all of the horrible explosions which have come to characterise the modern world? Professor Roman Gerodimos, an esteemed academic and expert on global affairs at Bournemouth University, has edited a truly blue-sky book about the role of shame in the aetiology of violence, drawing upon the work of the impactful American forensic psychiatrist Professor James Gilligan, who has highlighted the importance of humiliation as a core factor in the genesis of murder. In this deeply creative book, Professor Gerodimos has assembled a group of venerable clinicians, academics, and psychosocial theorists who explore the ways in which shame and humiliation among politicians serve as a true trigger to economic and military disasters across the globe. I cannot do justice to the deep thinking of this excellent collection of essays in merely one short paragraph, but I can underscore that the book contains superb chapters by such noted contributors as the political psychologist Professor Barry Richards, as well as work by James Gilligan and his partner, the highly-respected psychologist Professor Carol Gilligan. I found all of the essays very enlightening, including those by the editor himself; and I derived particular comfort from reading about the work of Professor Candida Yates, Director of the Centre for the Study of Conflict, Emotion and Social Justice at Bournemouth University, conducted in collaboration with Professor Iain MacRury, Professor of Communications, Media, and Culture at the University of Stirling, who have undertaken a visionary project by facilitating groups in which pro-Brexit and anti-Brexit members of the general public can speak honestly to one another, while being listened to and contained by Yates and MacRury. This constitutes a very forward-thinking approach to the application of psychoanalytical concepts and techniques to the wider community. This great book has much to teach us all.
As we know, Sigmund Freud absolutely adored William Shakespeare and often drew upon the wisdom of the Bard. Donald Winnicott admired this great Renaissance writer as well; and on 22nd July, 1952, in a little-known letter to Dr. Ernest Jones, the founder of the British Psycho-Analytical Society, he wrote that, “I am not so ashamed about saying that Shakespeare knew as much as a psycho-analyst”. Indeed, over the decades, psychotherapeutic clinicians have become hugely inspired by the writings of the great English playwright. More recently, Professor James Gilligan, the aforementioned Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at New York University, and his colleague, Professor David Richards, Professor of Law at New York University, have constructed a magnificent book on the ways in which we can continue to learn from the genius of our sixteenth-century ancestor. By exploring the insights of Shakespeare, and by reviewing Gilligan’s own unique work treating prisoners, the authors argue that men who suffer from traumatic experiences of humiliation will be at much greater risk of perpetrating acts of severe violence. Gilligan and Richards offer very convincing examinations of such characters as “Hamlet”, “Lear”, “Macbeth”, and “Othello”, and underscore the fact that those humiliated individuals who assume positions of political leadership will often cause far more destruction than the incarcerated offenders with whom Gilligan will have worked over many decades in his role as a forensic psychiatrist. I recommend this book hugely not only to mental health colleagues but, moreover, to anyone interested in the interconnection between politics and violence as well as the wisdom that can be learned from classical literature. Unsurprisingly, Profesora Estela Welldon wrote an endorsement of this book: “Whoever would have thought that William Shakespeare could help us prevent murder in the twenty-first century?” Welldon has absolutely encapsulated the essence of this very original work about the intersection among literature, law, and lunacy.
As a young student, I had the great joy of meeting Dr. Robert Young – later Professor Young – a remarkably multi-talented man who had trained initially as an academic and who had taught at the University of Cambridge, and who then retrained in psychotherapy and became not only a practitioner but, also, the founder of the engaging journal Free Associations and the impactful psychoanalytical publishing house Free Association Books. As the years progressed, I benefited from many more encounters with Bob Young and I always found him to be highly intelligent, deeply inspiring, extremely engaging, and unusually outspoken. If he disliked a colleague, for instance, he would often provide a full explanation as to why this might be the case. Bob contributed hugely to the profession by publishing such memorable books as Dr. Estela Welldon’s Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealization and Denigration of Motherhood, and Dr. Valerie Sinason’s Mental Handicap and the Human Condition: New Approaches from the Tavistock. Both of those titles have become classics, translated into many languages and reprinted in many new editions. Moreover, he also became one of the first professors of psychotherapy in the United Kingdom – and one of the most impactful – and taught psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in many different countries to boot. It pleases me greatly that, in the wake of Bob Young’s passing in 2019, Dr. Kurt Jacobsen and Professor R.D. Hinshelwood worked very hard to create a remarkably touching and informative Festschrift in Bob’s honour. This book not only pays much-deserved tribute to the late Professor Young but, also, in my estimation, provides us all with a model of how those of us who work in the most silent of professions can still find a way to use our voices in other arenas and thus make a greater impact.
Although we have absolutely no shortage of tomes about the great Herr Professor Sigmund Freud, not every biographer or historian will have written in a literarily engaging and compelling style. Thankfully, Andrew Nagorski, a long-standing professional journalist who has held many important posts as a foreign correspondent and, also, as a bureau chief for the internationally-respected magazine Newsweek in such varied locations as Berlin, Bonn, Hong Kong, Moscow, Rome, and Warsaw, just published a wonderful text about how Freud escaped from Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1938 and settled in London for the last year of his life. Although most of the data contained herein had already appeared in many well-known sources, Nagorski has distinguished himself as a wonderful storyteller, explaining how such key disciples as Dr. Ernest Jones, Ambassador William Bullitt, and Princesse Marie Bonaparte facilitated Freud’s departure, aided by none other than Anton Sauerwald – a Nazi official who secretly supported the family behind the scenes and even helped to preserve some of the books produced by Freud’s publishing house, the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag. Those of us who delve into this text will immediately appreciate Nagorski’s fantastic literary capacities and will, I know, rush to read many of his other excellent books, including such important works of non-fiction as Hitlerland and The Nazi Hunters, as well as a highly compelling and relevant novel entitled Last Stop Vienna. I recommend the entire oeuvre of Mr. Nagorski with much admiration and enthusiasm.
I shall never forget the very first day that I walked onto a psychogeriatric ward in an old psychiatric hospital, full of patients diagnosed with “catatonic schizophrenia”. The Chief Psychologist, who actually had to unlock the ward door with a huge metal key, proclaimed, “Welcome to Never-Never Land, Brett” and then proceeded to tell me that these patients were not really people! It shocked me that the doctors and nurses on the ward spent virtually no time at all with the patients and simply left them rotting in very dirty chairs. Fortunately, over the decades, the concept of schizophrenia has become better understood and, in my experience, patients with severe psychoses have now begun to receive more humane treatments, not least intensive psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in certain circumstances. Professor Orna Ophir, an esteemed psychoanalyst and historian in New York City, New York, and author of a terrific book on Psychosis, Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry in Postwar USA: On the Borderland of Madness, has now written the first full history of the concept of “schizophrenia”. Professor Ophir serves as Associate Director of the wonderful DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry: History, Policy, and the Arts, part of the Weill Cornell Medical College, and she also sits on the Committee on the History of Psychoanalysis of the International Psychoanalytical Association. Drawing upon her multiple skills, she has crafted a wonderful study of the complexities of psychiatric nosology. I encourage everyone to read this historically meticulous and clinically astute volume with much care, whether or not one works with schizophrenic patients. This book provides us all with a real opportunity to question the notion of diagnosis over time, which will be relevant to all the categories which enter our consulting rooms.
Dr. Dhwani Shah, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who practises in Princeton, New Jersey, has just produced his very first book. If Dr. Shah has managed to complete an inaugural volume at such a brilliant and insightful standard, I can only imagine that his next book will be even more game-changing! A faculty member of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and, also, at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, Dr. Shah has composed a very engaging work about the complexities of countertransference. With much honesty and much insight, he has explored a wide range of ugly feelings and thoughts which emerge in the mind of the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist during the course of treatment, whether arrogance, jealousy or, even, dissociation. Building upon the foundational countertransference studies of such pioneers as Dr. Paula Heimann, Dr. Heinrich Racker, and Professor Harold Searles, the author has explored how our private reactions to clinical material can often damage the process and minimise our positive impact. Many colleagues believe that most countertransferential responses stem entirely from the mind of the patient, but Shah has demonstrated that, irrespective of the patient, the clinician brings his or her own psyche into the consulting room, often in an undermining way. Shah has illustrated this tome richly with detailed but carefully disguised clinical material for which he obtained informed consent from some of his patients. One of the endorsers for the back cover of the book, the noted American practitioner Professor Nancy McWilliams, described this volume as one of “humanity, humility, and originality”. I could not agree more. Please purchase a copy of Dr. Shah’s very helpful text.
Back in 1985, I had the tremendous pleasure of meeting the remarkable Marion Milner at a conference in Cambridge, just days before her eighty-fifth birthday. With great warmth and generosity, she kindly invited me to her house in London and graciously granted me a life-changing opportunity to interview her about the early history of British psychoanalysis. She kindly shared her memories of everyone from Donald Winnicott to Masud Khan to Ronald Laing, and she spoke about her pioneering work with “Susan”, a woman diagnosed as schizophrenic, who benefited hugely from Milner’s traditional psychoanalytical treatment. I learned so much from Mrs. Milner and had the pleasure of absorbing several bits of her tremendous wisdom for many years thereafter, until her death in 1998. Across her long lifetime, Milner authored some truly memorable books, ranging from On Not Being Able to Paint (published under the pseudonym of Joanna Field) to The Suppressed Madness of Sane Men: Forty-Four Years of Exploring Psychoanalysis. She also wrote the much-forgotten The Human Problem in Schools: A Psychological Study Carried Out on Behalf of the Girls’ Public Day School Trust, published in 1938, which deserves to be reprinted, owing to its status as one of the foundational texts in the field of educational psychology. To help us remember the great Marion Milner, Dr. Margaret Boyle Spelman, a highly experienced colleague and respected author in Ireland, and Professor Joan Raphael-Leff, one of the icons of British psychoanalysis, renowned for her multitudinous achievements – not least the curation of the Academic Faculty of the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families – have produced a truly memorable Festschrift in honour of Mrs. Milner. I salute the editors for having commissioned such a magnificent set of tributes to Marion as a person and as a clinician. For those who have already encountered Milner, this Festschrift will provide much further engagement, and for those who have never read her great works, this book will open up an entirely rich, new world of psychological contributions.
A Truly Remarkable Achievement
John Schlapobersky, When They Came for Me: The Hidden Diary of an Apartheid Prisoner (Berghan Books).
Many mental health professionals deeply admire the work of John Schlapobersky, the internationally renowned group analyst and psychotherapist, based in London, who has published many memorable books. I first encountered Schlapobersky’s work back in 1987, when he produced a wonderful edition of papers by the great Dr. Robin Skynner, Explorations with Families: Group Analysis and Family Therapy, one of the first comprehensive textbooks on the application of psychoanalysis beyond the couch. Some years later, Schlapobersky completed a book of his own, From the Couch to the Circle: Group-Analytic Psychotherapy in Practice, which has now become a classic. Like most mental health professionals, Schlapobersky has always lectured about his working life and his understanding of the psychological process. But last year, in 2021, he published a staggeringly engaging, shocking, heart-breaking, and heart-warming memoir, about his experiences in his native South Africa back in 1969, when, as a young man, he bravely and boldly campaigned against the regnant apartheid. Horrified by the ways in which police treated black members of the public, Schlapobersky dared to protest against such racist hatred and, in consequence, ended up in solitary confinement in the Pretoria Prison for several weeks, before he managed to be released and then relocated to the United Kingdom. This touchingly-written autobiography describes the grotesque ways in which certain countries have abused their citizens over time, and that even in a prison, “white” inmates would receive better treatment than “black” inmates. I know that everyone will join me in saluting John Schlapobersky for his great courage and resilience. Not only did he become one of the worldwide leaders of group psychotherapy and group analysis, but, back in 1985, he helped to establish the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, now known as Freedom from Torture – an organisation that has undertaken vital work to save many lives. I deeply regret that I had not yet read Schlapobersky’s memoir in 2021, when I prepared my last list of “Top Ten” books. Had I done so, I promise that this unique autobiography would have received a much-deserved tribute. It pleases me that I can now call attention to this important volume, and I do hope that everyone will purchase a copy and share this story and these insights as widely as possible. Thank you, John.
Briefly Noted
In addition to these ten very special titles, as well as the unique book by John Schlapobersky, we have many other great publications from which to choose – a true indication of the immense creativity of our bold colleagues who have kindly offered to share their clinical wisdom.
First and foremost, Confer Books and Karnac Books have released a veritable plethora of excellent new titles, all of which can be accessed on either the website or in person at the newly-relaunched Confer-Karnac bookshop, located on Strype Street in London E1 7LQ, between Liverpool Street and Aldgate East tube stations. This beautiful new shop, stunningly well-managed by Taneisha Smith and her experienced colleagues (many of whom worked for years at the old Karnac Books on the Finchley Road in Northwest London), not only sells all of these wonderful titles but, also, hosts book parties and art exhibitions (https://www.karnacbooks.com).
Our fellow psychotherapeutic publishers have also produced some very important new texts. Although I cannot do justice to all of the great books released in 2022, I will foreground a few others that have certainly captured my attention. In the spirit of collegiality and camaraderie, everyone at Confer Books and Karnac Books raises a glass to the important contributions of our fellow psychoanalytical publishers.
Phoenix Publishing House, based in Bicester, Oxfordshire – founded by Kate Pearce and Fernando Marques, two former, long-standing staff members of the old Karnac Books – has, once again, facilitated the creation of many excellent books about psychoanalysis. The new titles which I have found especially compelling include: Lessons in Psychoanalysis: Psychopathology and Clinical Psychoanalysis for Trainee Analysts, by Franco De Masi; Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times, by Michael J. Diamond; The Evil Imagination: Understanding and Resisting Destructive Forces, by Roger Kennedy; Freud / Lynch: Behind the Curtain, edited by Jamie Ruers and Stefan Marianski; Contemporary Child Psychotherapy: Integration and Imagination in Creative Clinical Practice, edited by Roz Read and Jeanne Magagna; The Evolution of Freud: His Theoretical Development of the Mind-Body Relationship and the Role of Sexuality, by Barry R. Silverstein – a splendid and intellectually rigorous encapsulation of the theories of our founding father; and Schizophrenia: Science, Psychoanalysis, and Culture, by Kevin Volkan and Vamik Volkan.
Routledge, located in London and in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, has published a plethora of important titles in the fields of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. The experienced team, consisting of Kate Hawes, the Senior Publisher, and Susannah Frearson, the Publisher, and Zoe Meyer, the Editor, has orchestrated the commissioning and releasing of many important titles in our fields. Although I cannot do justice to all of the significant Routledge books of 2022, I particularly recommend James Joyce and the Internal World of the Replacement Child, by Mary Adams; Pandemics, Wars, Traumas and Literature: Echoes from the Front Lines, by Françoise Davoine; Group Analysis Throughout the Life Cycle: Foulkes Revisited from a Group Attachment and Developmental Perspective, by Arturo Ezquerro and María Cañete; A Psychotherapist Paints: Insights from the Border of Art and Psychotherapy by Morris Nitsun; Psychoanalysis and Ecology: The Unconscious and the Environment, by Cosimo Schinaia; and A Study of Malignant Narcissism: Personal and Professional Insights, by Richard Wood.
Of particular interest, I strongly salute the many rich titles about the wider application of depth-psychological thinking which have appeared in “The Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture Series”, a special Routledge monograph collection edited by scholars Professor Caroline Bainbridge and Professor Candida Yates, which include Post-traumatic Attachments to the Eerily Moving Image: Something to Watch Over Me, by Andrew Asibong; The American Dream and the American Cinema in the Age of Trump: From Object Relations to Social Relations, by Graham S. Clarke and Ross Clarke; Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere: Males Bodies of Dis / Inhibition, by Jacob Johanssen; and Toy Story and the Inner World of the Child: Animation, Play, and the Creative Life, by Karen Cross.
Aeon Books, an independent publishing house founded by Oliver Rathbone, the former owner of Karnac Books, specialises in the growing subject of herbal medicine, alternative medicine, spirituality, and, also, psychology. Drawing upon his many years as an exclusively psychoanalytical book publisher, Rathbone has commissioned not only titles of an overtly medical and health-related nature, but, also, those linked to health psychology. I strongly recommend many of the new Aeon Books titles, especially Inflammation: The Source of Chronic Disease. How to Treat it with Herbs and Natural Healing – a beautifully produced and warmly illustrated text written by Christine Herbert, which provides highly detailed and readable information about the psychosomatic underbelly of a range of health conditions.
So many other great publishing houses have curated some lovely titles of deep relevance to those of us who work in the psychological field. These include: the highly readable and insightful Relationship Reset, by Lissy Abrahams (Macmillan / Pan Macmillan Australia); the forward-thinking Therapeutic Improvisation: How to Stop Winging it and Own it as a Therapist, by Michael Alcée (W.W. Norton and Company); the heart-warming Yoga Saved My Life, by the psychotherapist Sasha Bates (Yellow Kite / Hodder and Stoughton); the historically rigorous Libido, Culture, and Consciousness: Revisiting Freud’s Totem and Taboo by Daniel Benveniste (IPBooks); the rich and expansive Intersectionality in the Arts Psychotherapies, edited by Jessica Collier and Corrina Eastwood (Jessica Kingsley Publishers); and the deeply inspiring Respark: Igniting Hope and Joy After Trauma and Depression, by Graham Music (Mind-Nurturing Books). And for those who happen to read German, I hugely recommend the wise and scholarly 365 x Freud: Ein Lesebuch für jeden Tag, edited by Tobias Nolte and Kai Rugenstein (Klett-Cotta / J.G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger) – a wonderful tribute to the father of psychoanalysis, which will soon be published in an English-language edition.
Two Special Psychological Novels
Although the vast majority of psychotherapeutic practitioners will produce works of non-fiction, a small and cherished group of our colleagues have actually drawn upon their clinical insights and their literary skills to create unique works of fiction.
Over the years, Lindsay Wells, a much-admired London-based psychotherapist, has written several truly gripping novels under the pseudonym of “William Rose”. These include The Strange Case of Madeleine Seguin: A Novel, released in 2016, and its sequel, Camille and the Raising of Eros, published in 2019. Most recently, the publishers Sphinx launched his newest contribution, The Freedom of the Villainous: A Novel, a warmly-written and compelling nineteenth-century tale of two identical twin sisters who struggle between lives of peace and villainy. I recommend all three of these deeply engaging texts.
Sphinx has also just published a novel by the internationally-esteemed traumatologist Dr. Valerie Sinason, who made an incomparable contribution to mental health, not only by creating psychotherapeutic services for the severely disabled but, also, by recognising the brutal realities of organised abuse. A long-standing author of non-fiction titles as well as a much-published poet, she has now completed her very first full-length novel, The Orpheus Project, about a young woman who accuses two extremely famous public figures – a politician and a pop star – of grotesque sexual assaults. Once again, Dr. Sinason has produced an outstanding volume. Not only has she gifted us this wonderful work of fiction, but, during 2022, she also released two more books, namely, Treating Children with Dissociative Disorders: Attachment, Trauma, Theory and Practice, co-edited by Renée Potgieter Marks (Routledge / Taylor and Francis Group), as well as a remarkable, illustrated text intended for profoundly disabled individuals who cannot necessarily read words, namely, A Refugee’s Story, co-authored by Professor the Baroness Sheila Hollins, in association with Hina Gillani and Elizabeth Laird, and illustrated by Mike Nicholson (Books Beyond Words). I recommend all of these titles with great enthusiasm. And for fellow Sinason fans, please note that, in early 2023, Karnac Books will be publishing yet another one of her contributions, co-edited by Dr. Adah Sachs, on The Psychotherapist and the Professional Complaint: The Shadow Side of Psychotherapy, which, I know, will be groundbreaking.
Oliver Rathbone, the former Publisher of Karnac Books, launched Sphinx – an innovative imprint of Aeon Books – which produces works of fiction by eminent clinicians, thus constituting a most unique contribution to the field of publishing. I strongly encourage colleagues who wish to take a break from “non-fiction” to explore the many rich works of “fiction” in the Sphinx library (https://www.sphinxbooks.co.uk).
Three Neglected Classics
Since I first began writing this annual “Top Ten” column in 2016, I have always focused exclusively upon newly-released titles. But, as an historian, I yearn to help promote not only contemporary publications, and I also wish to revisit those books from the last century which many of us will have forgotten or will never have encountered. Although we have no shortage of much-neglected classics from the twentieth century, I shall now flag up three of my very favourite ancient tomes, which deserve to be read and re-read.
- Ronald G. Gordon, Editor, A Survey of Child Psychiatry (Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press, 1939).
Today, in the twenty-first century, very few, if any, mental health professionals will remember the name of Dr. Ronald Gordon, but, during the 1920s and 1930s, he became one of the true founders of the discipline now known as child psychiatry in the United Kingdom, and he did so from an overtly psychodynamic psychotherapeutic perspective. Gordon published an excellent book on The Neurotic Personality in 1927, and he co-authored An Introduction to Psychological Medicine, which appeared in 1936, written in collaboration with several colleagues, including Dr. John Rawlings Rees, then Medical Director of the Tavistock Clinic. In 1939, Dr. Gordon produced a wonderful, edited book, A Survey of Child Psychiatry, whose chapter-contributors included none other than Dr. John Bowlby and Dr. Donald Winnicott. During the late 1930s, the vast majority of physicians who specialised in childhood mental illness adopted an overtly biological approach and even recommended that depressed children should be separated from their families and sent to the countryside. Gordon’s fellow authors championed the newer and more humane psychotherapeutic approach and, in my estimation, helped to change the course of child mental health in the decades which followed. I know of few people who have ever read this brilliant volume and I warmly encourage everyone to obtain a second-hand copy if possible.
- Lucy Freeman, Fight Against Fears (Crown Publishers, 1951).
Back in the 1940s, a brilliant young New Yorker called Lucy Greenbaum became one of the very first female journalists at The New York Times. In the wake of the Second World War, Greenbaum embarked upon psychoanalytical treatment – quite a bold undertaking at that time – and she found it so very transformative that, in 1951, she published a memoir of her time on the couch, Fight Against Fears, written under her married name, Lucy Freeman. This bold and honest and magnificently crafted book became an immediate bestseller in the United States of America; and, in consequence, many people not only reached out to psychoanalysts for personal treatment but, moreover, numerous men and women decided to train in the field, having become so inspired by Freeman’s insights and confessions. I had the great honour of having enjoyed a warm friendship with Lucy Freeman during the 1980s and beyond, until her death in 2004 at the age of eighty-eight years. Across her remarkable lifetime, she published dozens of books on psychoanalysis, including a superb biography of Bertha Pappenheim, better known as “Anna O”. I deeply recommend Freeman’s text, Fight Against Fears, not only as a fantastic historical contribution to our field, and not only as proof that psychotherapy really does work, but, moreover, as a veritable role model on how to write a book!
- Flora Rheta Schreiber, The Shoemaker: The Anatomy of a Psychotic (Simon and Schuster, 1983).
As someone who has worked in the field of forensic mental health, I have always endeavoured to learn as much as possible about why certain human beings commit such horrific crimes as rape, arson, paedophilia, and, most shockingly, murder. Back in 1983, I read an incredibly revealing book about the childhood origins of the serial killer Joseph Kallinger, namely, Professor Flora Rheta Schreiber’s exceptionally insightful study about the early years of this American man who, in the 1970s, became extremely delusional and decided that he would have to murder every single human being on the planet! Kallinger did manage to kill three people, including one of his very own children, before the police captured and imprisoned him. Professor Schreiber, a psychoanalytically informed literary scholar, best known for her iconic book Sybil – the most revealing text about multiple personality disorder – spent many years interviewing Kallinger after his incarceration. And, in 1983, she published her findings, demonstrating that Kallinger had endured incomparable physical and sexual trauma throughout his early life. I regard this book – now much forgotten, alas – as one of the most important publications about violence ever produced. Like her old friend Lucy Freeman, Schreiber wrote with such panache and engagement. I warmly recommend this increasingly forgotten classic as a work of true genius.
Thank you, dear readers of the Confer website, for allowing me to share my bibliophilia psychotherapeutica with you. I hope and trust that some of these recommendations will provide not only intellectual enrichment, but, also, personal enjoyment, and might assist us all to improve our clinical capacities as we devote ourselves to the painful, but potentially transformative, coalface of psychological work.
Please stay as safe and as well as possible,
Wishing us all a much more peaceful 2023 …
Brett.