BRETT KAHR’S TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2020
Professor Brett Kahr certainly knows something about the art of authoring books. Over the decades, he has written or edited fifteen volumes and has served as series editor for more than sixty-five further titles.
Most recently, he has produced Dangerous Lunatics: Trauma, Criminality, and Forensic Psychotherapy – a study of the childhood origins of extreme violence (e.g., paedophilia and murder) – one of the six inaugural titles from Confer Books – the new publishing arm of Confer Limited.
Confer takes great pleasure in having invited him to share with us, once again, his recommendations of the ten best books of the year.
Brett writes:
Reading books in the midst of a deadly global pandemic has certainly presented us all with yet another significant challenge.
As every single one of us has had to navigate the terrifying physical and psychological complexities of COVID-19, the very act of cuddling up with books has felt a rather different experience this year. Many of my colleagues – even the most geeky, scholarly, academic ones – have confessed that they have had great difficulty concentrating while reading professional psychological literature. Indeed, the coronavirus has become such a dominant feature of our lives and our minds that keeping up with the latest tome about the work of Melanie Klein or the newest theories of countertransference may not be quite at the top of our “to do” list at this particular point in time.
I live and work in London, rather close to several of our hardest-hit hospitals. One sunny Saturday afternoon in April of 2020 – at the very apex of the first wave of the coronavirus crisis – I perched myself in a comfortable garden chair and attempted to read a fascinating and beautifully researched tome on the history of psychiatric treatment in nineteenth-century Germany. Alas, I simply could not absorb more than two or three paragraphs of text before a blaringly loud ambulance drove by. Minutes later, a noisy medicopter flew overhead and interrupted my reading even more so. Shockingly, over the course of the next hour, no fewer than ten ambulances whooshed past the garden and at least seven more helicopters did likewise.
If I possessed a greater capacity to block out external reality, I might have settled myself into that carefully researched book on Imperial psychiatry, written by the distinguished scholar Dr. Eric J. Engstrom, much more effectively; however, as each ambulance rushed by, I could not help but think about the pain and devastation of the patients and the paramedics inside. My heart truly sank.
Needless to say, I abandoned my efforts at reading that monograph – something that I have rarely ever done in the course of my bibliophilic life.
Fortunately, as we all began to adjust to this new corona-infested world, my ability to focus on books and papers began to return; and it pleases me to report that I have done my best to keep abreast of the very finest psychotherapeutic publications which have appeared in 2020, of which we have no shortage.
Despite the devastation of COVID-19 and the awful closures of businesses and, above all, the tragic loss of so many lives, our profession has continued to provide indispensable services to our clients and patients, and I salute every single one of my fellow practitioners for soldiering on, helping to prevent, or at least to minimise, the outbursts of anxiety, depression, suicidality, and violence among so many of the often vulnerable people with whom we work.
Amid all of the chaos of this global health emergency, it pleases me to announce that Confer – our nation’s leading provider of continuing professional education for mental health practitioners – has launched not one, but two, publishing arms, namely, Confer Books, whose first eight titles have already appeared in print and whose sales have already proved impressive, and, Karnac Books – the newly inaugurated version of the old press of the same name which had ceased trading in 2017, having sold its backlist to another publisher.
Confer Books and Karnac Books – staffed by a highly experienced team of publishing experts and mental health professionals – welcome proposals from both established authors and aspiring ones. As someone who has written for Confer Books and who consults to both imprints, I recommend these extraordinary specialist presses most highly.
In view of my close association with Confer Books and Karnac Books – our newly established “Publishers of the Mind” – I have elected not to review any of the titles from these imprints as part of my Top Ten list, in spite of the magnificence of some of our inaugural works (details of which can be found on our website); instead, I have selected a fine array of books, produced by a range of different houses – our comrades in mental health publishing – and I warmly encourage us to explore these recent contributions.
Each of us must work hard in months to come in order to protect our physical and mental health, and the well-being of our loved ones, including, of course, our patients; therefore, indulging in what I call bibliophilia psychotherapeutica might not seem to be our utmost priority. But whatever unfolds with this ugly pandemic, we must still continue to educate ourselves and to enhance our minds, so that we may expand our thinking and, also, improve our work with clients; therefore, I hope that these Top Ten books might be a source of inspiration and, even, fun.
Wishing us all a much happier 2021 …
Brett.
Brett’s Top Ten
(We have listed these books in alphabetical order, according to each author’s surname).
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, so many of my patients have begun to report dreams of being transported to Nazi concentration camps. This should hardly come as a surprise, as many of us, especially those in crowded cities, feel trapped and unsafe and far too exposed to deadliness. Although it might be quite unfair to compare the coronavirus to the Nazis, the publication of Professor Ira Brenner’s superbly edited book on psychoanalytical Holocaust studies could not be more timely.
An experienced Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Thomas Jefferson University, and, also, the Chair of the Holocaust Discussion Group of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Brenner has made a hugely important contribution by assembling a group of experts who have written about the impact of Holocaust traumatisation across the generations. The bold and original essays in Brenner’s handbook explore the impact of Nazism, not only upon the children and grandchildren of Hitler’s victims but, also, upon the descendants of the perpetrators as well.
Having worked with those whose ancestors had suffered in concentration camps, as well as with those whose family members had supported the Nazi party, I have certainly come to appreciate the devastating multi-generational sequelae of such unthinkable sadism. The distinguished contributors to this handbook, who include noted practitioners Ilany Kogan, Professor Dori Laub, Professor Peter Loewenberg, Professor Henry Zvi Lothane, and Professor Anna Ornstein, examine a wide range of subjects, including the transmission of unatoned guilt, the psychology of evil, and the nature of resilience.
The editor, Professor Brenner, had the privilege of training with the late Professor Judith Kestenberg and the late Professor Martin Bergmann – arguably the two leading pioneers of psychoanalytical Holocaust studies, and each, in my estimation, a true genius. Thankfully, Ira Brenner has encapsulated that knowledge in this well-presented and supremely important text.
Many years ago, as a young student, I read a most memorable book chapter about the psychological aspects of working with survivors of the Holocaust, written by a leading Dutch psychoanalyst, Dr. Eddy de Wind. While studying this author’s landmark essay on “Psychotherapy After Traumatization Caused by Persecution”, which appeared in 1971 in Professor Henry Krystal’s and Professor William G. Niederland’s wonderful book on Psychic Traumatization: Aftereffects in Individuals and Communities, I had no idea that de Wind had endured his own horrific imprisonment, first in the Westerbork labour camp and then in the Auschwitz death camp.
In 1946, Dr. de Wind published a gripping, Dutch-language memoir about his time in these Nazi hell holes, based on his first-hand notes, scribbled surreptitiously while in custody; but, alas, this shocking book never became widely known outside of The Netherlands. Thankfully, David Colmer has now translated Eddy de Wind’s autobiographical account into English, and everyone must rush to read this vital story.
Although most psychotherapists and psychoanalysts devote our lives to the treatment of trauma victims, we must remember that we, too, at any point in history, might have to endure dreadful trauma ourselves, especially as we all attempt to navigate COVID-19. Unlike the four sisters of Sigmund Freud who perished at the hands of the Nazis, as well as quite a number of pioneering psychoanalysts, such as Dr. Guido Brecher, Dr. Margarete Hilferding, Dr. Karl Landauer, Dr. Sabina Spielrein, Dr. August Watermann, and many others, this tale of Eddy de Wind’s survival provides great hope as well as a veritable guidebook on how the human mind can conquer unthinkable torture.
What might we be able to learn about a person from the very building in which he or she has lived? Although not written from an explicitly psychotherapeutic lens, this wonderful exploration of the intimate history of actual houses provides an immense amount of insight into the psychology of the home. Edited by two distinguished scholars, Dr. Kate Kennedy and Professor Dame Hermione Lee, doyennes of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing at the University of Oxford – a psychoanalytically sympathetic research institution which promotes the study of biography – this text, Lives of Houses, features contributions by some of the nation’s most distinguished authors, ranging from the novelist Julian Barnes, to the historian David Cannadine, to the biographer Jenny Uglow.
In the pages of this brilliant book, we come to meet everyone from Samuel Johnson to Winston Churchill to Benjamin Britten, and we take great delight as the distinguished authors provide us with unique glimpses into the parallels between the external living spaces and the internal states of mind of some of the world’s most iconic figures. Each chapter in this multi-authored collection deserves a close reading. I particularly enjoyed Kate Kennedy’s own essay about the British composer and poet, Ivor Gurney, who struggled with manic-depressive illness and suicidality and who spent many years in a variety of psychiatric hospitals.
A librettist and musical scholar in her own right and, also, the Associate Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, as well as the author of a forthcoming biography of Gurney, Dr. Kennedy has provided us with a wonderful understanding of the impact of such psychiatric hospital spaces on Gurney’s compositions. As psychotherapists, we spend our careers examining the “internal homes” of our patients, and now, during COVID-19, those of us who work via Zoom will often enjoy glimpses of our patients’ “external homes” for the very first time. This marvellously curated book of finely crafted, elegant chapters – beautifully produced and bound with a magnificent cover – will offer many creative thoughts about the potential interconnection between the inside and the outside world.
Professor the Baron Richard Layard, otherwise known as Lord Layard of Highgate, a noted British economist at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the University of London, became a peer in the House of Lords in 2000 in recognition of his multiple achievements as both an academic and as a political consultant. In recent years, Lord Layard has devoted himself to the study of mental health and happiness, emphasising that financial success does not guarantee psychological well-being. Boldly, he has become a champion of short-term psychological therapies for members of the general public, convinced that such interventions facilitate emotional sturdiness.
His latest book, co-written with George Ward (a research student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), provides an excellent overview of the empirical data on happiness, emphasising the key role of mental health in determining psychological, medical, and economic success in life, clearly underscoring that, “Mental illness causes as much of the world’s misery as a physical illness does.”
One deeply applauds Baron Layard for his huge contribution in helping to create I.A.P.T. (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies), as part of our British National Health Service. Nevertheless, in spite these wonderful achievements, Layard and his colleagues have focused their efforts predominantly on cognitive-behavioural therapy, and, in this engaging 397-page book, Layard and Ward mention “brief psychodynamic therapy” only once, en passant, with no reference whatsoever to Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis, or long-term psychotherapy. Indeed, when speaking of the importance of couple therapy, Layard has claimed that if a mental health professional has already qualified as a cognitive-behavioural therapist, he or she would require “only an intensive one-week course” of training in couple work – a pronouncement which those of us who have spent years of study to become couple psychoanalytical practitioners might find somewhat disconcerting.
While one cannot help but admire the fact that an economist has become such a highly respected spokesperson for mental health, we must remember that psychoanalysis existed long before cognitive-behavioural therapy and that it still exists and still continues to save untold numbers of lives. We must also remember that those of us who work psychodynamically often deal with large numbers of patients who have already attended for brief I.A.P.T. treatments, which, often, had facilitated only a tiny amount of support, and which had frequently failed to unravel any deep-seated characterological conflicts and distress.
I recommend this book hugely; but I also hope that, in future, the longer-term therapies will be more properly situated and more fully appreciated.
When I first entered the mental health profession, every single honourable practitioner refrained from commenting about political matters, as most of us would have regarded a cavalier armchair diagnosis as an ethical breach. But, in recent years, many clinicians have argued that we, as psychological experts, now have an obligation to speak out publicly about certain world leaders who might, in fact, meet the diagnostic criteria for mental illness. Indeed, even the American Psychiatric Association – a bastion of conservatism in many respects – has begun to question its viewpoints on this matter, and, over the last decade or more, quite a number of its most prominent members have begun to pontificate about the psychiatric vulnerabilities of certain well-known political figures.
Dr. John Martin-Joy, an instructor in psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and a candidate at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, has written a stirring book which reviews the rich and complicated history of those psychoanalysts and psychiatrists who have offered public observations about the mental status of clinically compromised world leaders, exploring the vicissitudes of this controversial topic. A well-composed, balanced, and inspiring tome, Dr. Martin-Joy’s carefully researched and, also, finely thought-through study deserves our admiration for its bravery and its sensibility about a delicate but, also, a potentially life-threatening matter.
I warmly encourage every mental health professional to read this book and I hope that our membership organisations might host discussions to think through the important implications of these crucial issues.
The name of Frank Plumpton Ramsey will be little known within the psychotherapy community, but, thankfully, we now have an opportunity to remember that this gentleman played a vital role in the transmission of psychoanalytical thought in Great Britain during the 1920s, long before anyone knew very much at all about depth psychology. Born in 1903 and educated at the University of Cambridge, Ramsey became a distinguished intellectual who specialised in economics, mathematics, and philosophy. As a youngster, he even translated some of the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein from German into English. And, through his association with the great economist John Maynard Keynes – a member of the Bloomsbury Group and a great friend to James Strachey, one of the earliest psychoanalysts in London – Ramsey developed a strong interest in the work of Sigmund Freud and he even journeyed to Vienna to undergo treatment with Dr. Theodor Reik, who helped Ramsey to cope with a long-standing depression.
Ramsey made an important contribution to the growth of psychology by participating in a Sunday-night study group, held in Cambridge, devoted to an examination of the work of Freud. Members included not only Ramsey and Strachey but, also, Professor Arthur Tansley, a noted botanist, and Harold Jeffreys, a brilliant mathematician, as well as Dr. John Rickman, one of Freud’s very own analysands and one of the leading figures in British psychoanalysis. Ramsey enjoyed these conversations tremendously; indeed, James Strachey even wrote to his wife that Ramsey – no stranger to academic gatherings – found this Cambridge psychoanalytical study group to be the most stimulating of all.
Happily, Professor Cheryl Misak, a philosopher at the University of Toronto, has produced a splendidly researched biography, based on unpublished archival materials; and this book pays fitting tribute to a fine mind who embraced our profession in the very early days. Sadly, Ramsey died in 1930 at the age of only twenty-six years. This comprehensive text pays fitting tribute to the life of this much-forgotten figure.
Dr. Anton Obholzer requires little introduction among members of the psychotherapeutic community. A highly experienced psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and a former Chief Executive of the Tavistock Clinic and the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, Obholzer has long distinguished himself as one of the world’s most esteemed experts in organisational psychology and psychoanalysis. A superb leader in his own right, Obholzer has now documented his many decades of research in a beautifully written and extremely wise encyclopaedia, brimming with papers which help us to understand the complex psychology of the workplace, focusing, in particular, upon the invisible, but impactful, role of unconscious forces which can often destroy entire industries. Masterfully presented in a tone that will appeal both to seasoned professionals and, also, to members of the public, Dr. Obholzer’s essays explore such diverse topics as the psychological complexities of joining a new organisation; anxiety in the workplace; resistance to change in the office; the so-called work-life balance; the psychology of the Board and the Chief Executive Officer; and so much more. Anyone who has ever toiled in an institutional setting must read this seminal set of chapters, which encompass a lifetime of wisdom, shared with clarity and insight. This book should be required reading for every single one of us.
When a mother or father dies at the age of 100 years, we might feel a sense of deep sadness and deprivation, but few of us will experience shock or surprise. For many, the death of an elderly, increasingly frail relative might even come as a relief. But how does a young woman, married for only seven months to a loving man, cope with the traumatic loss of a partner?
Juliet Rosenfeld, an esteemed London psychotherapist and a Trustee of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy, suffered the death of her dear, fifty-two-year-old husband, Andrew Rosenfeld, a brilliant businessman and supporter of worthy charities and a Vice-President of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, who succumbed to a fast-metastasising lung cancer. With tremendous compassion and, I might add, with great generosity, Juliet Rosenfeld has narrated her story of grief and bereavement in an absolutely gripping and touching personal memoir, The State of Disbelief, one of the most compelling pieces of autobiographical writing that I have ever read in my lifetime.
Drawing extensively upon Sigmund Freud’s work on “Mourning and Melancholia”, Rosenfeld provides us with a warm and tender and painful and cathartic account of her journey through this process which, at some point, will affect us all. Every one of us will, one day, have to manage the agony of spousal bereavement; alternatively, our spouse will have to survive our death. Therefore, this book touches on the most universal of themes.
I recommend this wonderful work quite unreservedly. It pleases me that, in the New Year, Freud Museum London will host a special webinar based on Juliet Rosenfeld’s sensitive and insightful publication, which, I know, will be well worth our attendance.
Back in the 1980s, David Livingstone Smith really changed the course of British psychotherapy. In those ancient days, our country boasted very few psychotherapy training programmes at all and most of them operated as rather private guilds. Keen to enhance the professionalism of our field, Smith helped to create the groundbreaking courses at the School of Psychotherapy and Counselling at Regent’s College (now upgraded as Regent’s University London), right in the heart of London’s Regent’s Park, which remains the most popular of psychotherapy trainings in this country with the largest number of registered students. Smith thus helped to position our discipline more fully within academia; indeed, in 1993, the Regent’s College training became the very first to offer a doctoral degree in psychotherapy. So, we owe a great deal to David Smith in that regard and, moreover, for his wonderful books on such diverse topics as Hidden Conversations: An Introduction to Communicative Psychoanalysis, and, also, Freud’s Philosophy of the Unconscious.
Sadly, for us, Smith departed from British shores some years ago to return to his native land where he now works as Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine; but, fortunately, he has persevered with his highly original research and has, subsequently, produced some truly stupendous tomes on topics of vital importance, including his most recent study of the growth of dehumanization and the origins of the psychology of inhumanity, exploring how ordinary men and women have become perpetrators of exceptional cruelty across the centuries.
Smith engages with the most gruesome of topics, from lynching and genocide to impurity and racial science, in the most compelling of ways. I found this book very inspiring, highly blunt, helpfully honest, and extremely enlightening. I congratulate Professor Smith on yet another wonderful gift.
In “Brett’s Top Ten” list for 2019, I took great delight in paying tribute to the unique Professor Vamik Volkan, then a four-time Nobel Prize nominee, who, across the years, has made huge contributions to the field of political psychology. In my review of Ferhat Atik’s book, A Psychoanalyst on His Own Couch: A Biography of Vamik Volkan and His Psychoanalytic and Psychopolitical Concepts, I described Volkan as “the Leonardo da Vinci of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.” Since that time, Volkan has received yet another Nobel Prize nomination – his fifth, in fact – thus far outstripping even Sigmund Freud!
His latest book on Large-Group Psychology: Racism, Societal Divisions, Narcissistic Leaders and Who We Are Now could not be more immediately relevant to our current world crises as Volkan provides immense insight into the nature of the ugliness of large-group behaviour on the global stage. Concisely written, this text elaborates the nature of leaders who suffer from “exaggerated narcissism”. Whereas most of us concentrate on the psychology of a single individual – a patient or a client – Volkan has applied his depth-psychological understanding to the entire planet and has drawn upon his blue-sky work as a consultant to governments worldwide.
This book, which concludes with a specially crafted appendix on the coronavirus, deserves our most careful consideration.
Special Commendation for Derek Draper
Although I have never before singled out one particular book in this annual column, on this occasion, I have chosen to do so. In fact, I feel that I must do so.
As many British colleagues will know, on 29th March, 2020, one of London’s most creative and much-admired psychotherapists, Derek Draper, husband of the noted television presenter Kate Garraway and father of two young children, entered the hospital, having begun to experience breathing difficulties. Some days later, the medical staff induced Derek into a coma in an effort to ease his physical pain. Shockingly, this admirable man remains in hospital to his day, more than eight months later – still alive but in a very compromised condition.
Many years ago, I had the pleasure of supervising Derek on his clinical work, during his training, and I found him to be a most warm-hearted, intelligent, convivial, and interesting colleague. I always admired his independent spirit and his wish to contribute to the field in his own special way. He never joined one of the sectarian clubs, so common in our profession. Instead, he absorbed the best of psychotherapeutic knowledge and used it to develop his own unique work and his own highly rich and accessible writings.
Shortly before his unexpected hospitalisation, Derek wrote to tell me about his forthcoming book, The Psychology of Everyday Life: Fifty Bite-sized Insights for Thriving in the Modern World (Hay House UK, 2020), which he described to me in his e-mail as an attempt “to popularise some of Freud’s and Winnicott’s ideas, along with other psychodynamic thinking.” Before I had a chance to reply, I read the horrifying news report about Derek’s illness.
Needless to say, our hearts go out to Derek Draper’s wife and children and wider family, and to his friends, colleagues, and clients, all of whom know the special qualities of this man only too well. Derek has written a fantastic book which helps to introduce psychodynamic ideas to a wider audience, and I hope that, in solidarity with this fine colleague, we will all purchase a copy and share this work with those keen to enhance their knowledge of psychology.
We deeply hope and pray for Derek’s recovery.
Briefly Noted
Paola Somaini, an Italian psychoanalyst, now living and working in the United Kingdom, deserves our admiration for her great creativity. Shortly after the outbreak of the coronavirus, Somaini produced a beautifully touching book for children, I Can See it with My Elephant Eye (Lulu Publishing, 2020), about a little girl, “Carolina”, who finds herself struggling to make sense of this ugly new world. Quite touchingly, “Carolina” develops a friendship with a wise elephant who, unlike human adults, speaks the truth about the fearful nature of COVID-19 in a much more manageable way. A nine-year-old child called Honor has written a wonderful endorsement for the back cover of Somaini’s excellent work: ‘ “A very comforting book! It made me happy to know that I am not the only one who is afraid of my fears.” ’ Paola Somaini has kindly offered to donate all proceeds of this publication, available in English and Italian and Spanish editions, via Amazon, to a children’s charity, the Place2Be. I congratulate the author, along with her fellow illustrators, Lily Tugendhat and Eva Tugendhat, for having engineered such a wonderful project. For anyone who has a child (or, indeed, for anyone who has ever been a child), this lovely book helps us to process our universally shared terrors at this time.
Professor Dame Hermione Lee, the venerable literary scholar and author, and a long-standing friend to psychoanalysis and its role in the writing of biography, has produced a new masterpiece – a study of one of our greatest contemporary playwrights, Tom Stoppard: A Life (Faber and Faber, 2020). Following in the footsteps of her many previous biographies of such giants as Philip Roth, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolf – each an extremely memorable tour de force – this new life story provides a gripping account of Sir Tom Stoppard’s remarkable journey. Hermione Lee’s book would make a great Christmas present indeed.
Forthcoming Titles
Despite the devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, it pleases me to report that many of the world’s leading psychotherapeutic publishers have continued to persevere and, happily, we have no shortage of impending titles to celebrate.
Confer Books and Karnac Books have commissioned new works from some of our leading mental health professionals and, also, from many aspiring writers; and, in 2021, we will be releasing a most exciting range of titles covering a broad array of subjects from the psychology of racism to recent developments in relational psychoanalysis, and so much more. Readers will receive regular announcements of these upcoming publications in due course.
In the spirit of collegiality and friendship, I do wish to note that some of our fellow publishers, still flourishing amid COVID-19, have also recruited talented authors. Phoenix Publishing House, founded in 2017 by Kate Pearce and Fernando Marques (each of whom earned their psychoanalytical stripes at Karnac Books in the days of old), will be releasing some terrific titles in 2021, including an excellent book, Finding the Piggle: Reconsidering D.W. Winnicott’s Most Famous Child Case, edited by the American psychoanalyst Dr. Corinne Masur, containing a range of highly insightful chapters, including a marvellous contemporary perspective by Dr. Zack Eleftheriadou. Phoenix Publishing House has also commissioned a new book by the venerable Dr. Christopher Bollas, entitled Three Characters: Narcissist, Borderline, Manic Depressive, as well as the one-hundredth title from the American psychoanalyst Professor Salman Akhtar, Tales of Transformation: A Life in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, which promises to be enthralling.
Routledge / Taylor and Francis Group will also be publishing a wide range of interesting and relevant titles in 2021. I will be especially keen to read Linda Cundy’s forthcoming edited book on Attachment, Relationships and Food: From Cradle to Kitchen. Cundy’s work on attachment theory will be well known to colleagues as she writes with such engagement and clarity, and this new book promises to offer very original insights into the vital role of food in the crafting of secure attachment bonds. Routledge also plans to publish Dr. Ken Fuchsman’s and Keri Cohen’s edition of Healing, Rebirth and the Work of Michael Eigen: Collected Essays on a Pioneer in Psychoanalysis, and I do look forward to this volume as I have long admired Dr. Michael Eigen’s contributions to our field. And we must all purchase a copy of the forthcoming tribute to the late, great Marion Milner, one of the most distinguished psychoanalysts of the twentieth century, who died in 1998 at the age of ninety-eight years. Dr. Margaret Boyle Spelman and Professor Joan Raphael-Leff, two esteemed practitioners and scholars, have edited a fantastic Festschrift in honour of this great lady, entitled Marion Milner: Evolution of Theory and Practice Over the Decades, which promises fresh insights into the life and work of this remarkable woman who always impressed me with her delightfully gentle wisdom and her very visible kindness. And, finally, colleagues will also enjoy Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Illegitimacy, Adoption and Reproduction Technology: Strangers as Kin, written by the highly experienced psychotherapist Prophecy Coles – no stranger to our community – who has provided an illuminating guide to the vicissitudes of adoption in the modern world. This book – already in print, despite its 2021 publication date – covers everything from the psychodynamics of “bastardy” to the complexities of reproductive technology.
An Additional Recommendation
Throughout the coronavirus emergency, I have not only endeavoured to read as many new books about psychotherapy and related subjects as possible, but I have also re-immersed myself plentifully in some long-standing mental health classics, not least, the works of our friend Sigmund Freud.
Moreover, I can report that, contrary to popular opinion, I do read some non-psychological books as well. And for those who might feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of psychotherapeutic texts piling up beside one’s bed, I especially recommend a fantastic new history book by the best-selling author and scholar, Ben Macintyre – the already popular Agent Sonya: Lover, Mother, Soldier, Spy (Viking / Penguin Books, Penguin Random House UK, 2020), an utterly captivating and brilliantly researched masterpiece of true drama and jaw-dropping intrigue about a seemingly ordinary Oxfordshire housewife who, in the 1940s, worked as an undercover agent for the Soviet Union. Perhaps this masterpiece should qualify as a psychological book after all. I must confess that I could not put it down.
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 will help 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,
Brett.
December, 2020.