BRETT KAHR’S TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2019
The year 2019 has proved to be full of landmarks in the world of psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytical publishing.
First and foremost, we must record, with sadness, the passing of Cesare Sacerdoti, who died on 3 March, 2019, at the age of eighty-one years. Sacerdoti served for many years as the owner and publisher of H. Karnac Books Limited, retiring from active service exactly twenty years ago, in 1999. During his tenure, Cesare expanded upon the foundational work of his predecessor, Harry Karnac, and developed Karnac Books from a small shop on London’s Gloucester Road, with a tiny division devoted to the reprinting of classic psychoanalytical titles, to a major force within psychological publishing. I owe Cesare Sacerdoti a particular debt of gratitude for having commissioned my very first books. All authors who had the privilege of having worked with Cesare will remember him fondly as a passionate scholar and as a true gentleman.
Also, throughout 2019, the world of psychoanalytical publishing has continued to flourish. Routledge / Taylor and Francis has produced over 200 psychotherapy-related titles during the past calendar year, and other stalwart publishers in the field, such as Jessica Kingsley Publishers and Sage Publications, have continued to make important contributions. Newer imprints such as the revived Free Association Books, as well as Phoenix Publishing House, and Trigger Press, have also contributed beautifully produced volumes to our field.
Most excitingly, Confer – the world’s leading continuing professional education service – has recently launched its own publishing division, Confer Books. The very first titles will appear in the springtime of 2020, written by some of the world’s leading mental health practitioners.
Thus, we have no shortage of great books on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis – an indication of the growth in popularity of our field, now in its third century!
For those who, like me, suffer from advanced bibliophilia psychotherapeutica, it gives me pleasure to highlight ten of the books that have particularly captured my attention, among the many fine works which have graced our shelves during this calendar year.
BRETT’S TOP TEN
1 ) Ferhat Atik, A Psychoanalyst on His Own Couch: A Biography of Vamik Volkan and His Psychoanalytic and Psychopolitical Concepts (Phoenix Publishing House, 2019).
|
2 ) Gabrielle Brown (Editor), Psychoanalytic Thinking on the Unhoused Mind (Routledge / Taylor and Francis Group, 2019).
|
3 ) Armand D’Angour, Socrates: The Making of a Philosopher (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019).
|
4 ) Bryony Davies, Sigmund Freud’s Collection: Highlights from the Freud Museum London (Freud Museum London, 2019).
|
5 ) Robbie Duschinsky and Kate White, Trauma and Loss: Key Texts from the John Bowlby Archive (Routledge / Taylor and Francis Group, 2020).
|
6 ) Moisés Lemlij, Face to Face: Leo Rangell. Arnold Richards. Estela Welldon (Sidea, 2019).
The Peruvian clinician, Professor Moisés Lemlij, one of the leading lights of psychoanalysis in South America, has produced a book of interviews with three of the superstars of our profession: the late Professor Leo Rangell – a former President of both the American Psychoanalytic Association and, also, of the International Psycho-Analytical Association – and the still vibrant icons, Professor Arnold Richards of New York City and Professor Estela Valentina Welldon of London. Lemlij – a skilled psychoanalyst of long standing – created an environment in which each of these clinical titans could speak to him in a frank and often unfettered style, revealing not only a great deal about the brilliance of our field but, also, about its shadow side. For those who might share my passion for the history of psychoanalysis, this book contains innumerable compelling anecdotes about our forefathers and foremothers which cannot be obtained elsewhere. The interviews also reveal much about the ways in which psychotherapists and psychoanalysts often treat one another with primitive cruelty and institutional backstabbing. Lemlij quizzed Rangell, Richards, and Welldon at length about their careers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, each discussed his or her work with patients in a very straightforward manner, but, by contrast, these senior clinicians all complained about some of the uglier organisational dynamics which have, at times, come to characterise this field, not least, the regrettable splitting into sub-divisions, whether Freudian, Kleinian, Winnicottian, and so forth. During his interview with Richards, the editor and interviewer, Lemlij, shared a provocative riddle: “Do you know the story about the difference between the Kleinians and Freudians? In a Freudian analysis the analyst might die, and the patient will barely know and in a Kleinian analysis the patient might die, and the analyst won’t know.” This sort of “joke” certainly typifies some of the vitriolic in-fighting which still mars certain psychological institutions. Collegial gossip, however, represents only one part of this deeply absorbing book. We have much to learn from such “tribal elders”, each of whom has made tremendous contributions to our profession in numerous forms over decades and decades of sustained and inspiring labours. |
7 ) Maria Luca, Claire Marshall, and John Nuttall, Integrative Theory and Practice in Psychological Therapies: New Directions (McGraw Hill / Open University Press, 2019).
|
8 ) Barry Richards, The Psychology of Politics (Routledge / Taylor and Francis Group, 2019).
|
9 ) William Rose, Camille and the Raising of Eros (Sphinx / Aeon Books, 2019).
|
10 ) Steven J. Taylor and Alice Brumby (Editors), Healthy Minds in the Twentieth Century: In and Beyond the Asylum (Palgrave Macmillan / Springer Nature Switzerland, 2020).
|
Briefly Noted
Dr Roger Amos, a retired haematologist (who happens to be married to a psychoanalyst), has written a lovely, short book, Portrait of a Life: Melanie Klein and the Artists, Phoenix Publishing House, which not only provides readers with a neat encapsulation of Klein’s life and work but, also, offers us an examination of why Klein hated, and subsequently destroyed, several visual representations of herself. This book can be enjoyed in one sitting. I also recommend Dr Judith Edwards’s lovely “intellectual party”, Psychoanalysis and Other Matters: Where Are We Now?, Routledge – a fine, edited selection of essays by both clinical and cultural practitioners, exploring the intersection between depth psychology and such diverse topics as literature, mathematics, and politics.
I also wish to encourage colleagues to purchase a very interesting book about sex! When, in 2007, I published my study of sexual fantasies – Sex and the Psyche – one of my psychoanalytical colleagues giggled, “Gosh, Brett, there is quite a lot about the sexual lives of couples in your book. I always forget to ask my couples about their sex life.” This comment from a senior mental health professional truly floored me until I remembered how Sigmund Freud’s frank engagement with the complexities of sexuality became increasingly “pre-oedipalised” over the decades, as psychoanalysts began to focus more and more on mothers and babies and on the presexual than on the more overtly libidinal stages which ensue across the life cycle. Thus, although everyone suspects that psychotherapists talk about nothing but sex, this may not always be the case; therefore, I warmly welcome all new serious books on sexuality which help us to navigate these complex conversations in the consulting room. Brighton-based psychotherapist Cherry Potter’s well-crafted study, How Psychotherapy Helps Us Understand Sexual Relationships: Insights from the Consulting Room, Routledge, provides us with clearly written and sage accounts about the childhood origins of sexual difficulties in adult life. For those who require assistance with the development of what I have come to refer to as the “sexual interviewing skin” – our capacity to become more comfortable in speaking to clients rather frankly and straightforwardly – this book will offer much useful case material and many theoretical insights.
In the interests of impartiality, I do not ordinarily include any of the works which appear in the various book series that I edit or co-edit, such as the “Forensic Psychotherapy Monograph Series” and the “History of Psychoanalysis Series”. But this year, we have published some particularly wonderful titles, not least Pamela Windham Stewart’s and Jessica Collier’s magnificent blue-sky edited book on practising psychotherapy in prisons, in the hope of providing compassionate treatment for violent women. This title, The End of the Sentence: Psychotherapy with Female Offenders (The Forensic Psychotherapy Monograph Series) Routledge, must be read by every forensic mental health worker and by every member of the judicial system. Likewise, the “Library of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis” produced several superstar titles in 2019. Above all, I recommend Engaging Couples: New Directions in Therapeutic Work with Families, Routledge, edited by Andrew Balfour, Christopher Clulow, and Kate Thompson – all leading couple mental health practitioners at Tavistock Relationships in London. This text truly underscores the ways in which a solid couple relationship will help prevent not only mental and physical illness but, also, crime. This book must be read in conjunction with colleague Mary Morgan’s thorough text, A Couple State of Mind: Psychoanalysis of Couples and the Tavistock Relationships Model, Routledge, based upon her many decades of work as a pioneer of couple psychotherapy.
Forthcoming Treats.
In July 2020, Professor Salman Akhtar, one of the most respected (and, also most prolific) psychoanalysts in the world, will publish his one hundredth book, Tales of Transformation: A Life in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, containing 100 anecdotes about his rich lifetime of learning. Having deeply admired Professor Akhtar’s previous work, I know that this book will be well worth reading.
But in the meantime, please make a note in your diaries to queue up at bookshops on Friday 7 February 2020, and ensure that you purchase a copy of Juliet Rosenfeld’s forthcoming contribution, The State of Disbelief: A Story of Death, Love and Forgetting, Short Books Limited, which I have just had the privilege of reading in proof form. Rosenfeld, a London psychotherapist and a Trustee of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy, has written a very personal memoir about the death of her fifty-two-year-old husband, describing in highly moving prose how she managed to navigate such a deeply unfair and unthinkable loss. Drawing upon the works of Sigmund Freud, upon her clinical training, and upon her own personal qualities and capabilities, Rosenfeld has crafted a book full of tenderness, reality-testing, and wisdom. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one … and anyone who will ever lose a loved one in future … must read this book.
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.
Happy seasonal greetings to all!
Brett Kahr
December 2019
[Please note that all of the Top Ten books listed above have appeared in print in physical form during the 2019 calendar year. A small selection of these titles bears the date 2020 – a cunning publishing convention. Let us remember that Sigmund Freud’s masterpiece Die Traumdeutung – The Interpretation of Dreams – first graced the Viennese bookshops in November, 1899, but boasted the date 1900 on the title page.]
Professor Brett Kahr certainly knows something about the art of authoring books. Over the decades, he has written or edited fourteen volumes and has served as series editor for more than fifty-five further titles.
Earlier this year, he published three new books:
and, also,
His next book, Dangerous Lunatics: Trauma, Criminality, and Forensic Psychotherapy, will appear in April 2020, as one of the first titles marking the launch of 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.