With Culture in Mind ─ Psychoanalytic Stories

This is a new kind of anthology. More conversation than collection, it locates the psychic and the social in clinical moments illuminating the analyst's struggle to grasp a patient's internal life as voiced through individual political, social, and material contexts. Each chapter is a single detailed case vignette in which aspects of race, gender, sexual orientation, heritage, ethnicity, class – elements of the sociopolitical matrix of culture – are brought to the fore in the transference-countertransference dimension, demonstrating how they affect the analytic encounter. Additionally, discussions by three senior analysts further deconstruct patients' and analysts' cultural embeddedness as illustrated in each chapter. For the practicing clinician as well as the seasoned academic, this highly readable and intellectually compelling book clearly demonstrates that culture saturates subjective experience – something that all mental health professionals should keep in mind.

Muriel Dimen, PhD, is Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychology, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and Professor Emerita, Anthropology, Lehman College (CUNY). On the faculties of many institutes, she is Editor of Studies in Gender and Sexuality, associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and a founding board member and former Treasurer of the International Association for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Her most recent book, Sexuality, Intimacy, Power, received the Goethe Award from the Canadian Psychological Association for the Best Book of Psychoanalytic Scholarship published in 2003. She has also written Surviving Sexual Contradictions (1986) and The Anthropological Imagination (1977). Her co-edited books are Gender in Psychoanalytic Space: Between Clinic and Culture with Virginia Goldner (2002), Storms in Her Head: New Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives on Breuer and Freud’s Studies on Hysteria with Adrienne Harris (2001), and Regional Variation in Modern Greece and Cyprus: Toward an Ethnography of Greece with Ernestine Friedl (1976). A Fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, she practices in Manhattan and supervises nationally.

Dimen, Introduction. Part I: The Social Third. Sheehy, Melissa: Lost in a Fog, or "How Difficult is This MOMMY Stuff, Anyway?" Hartman, Darren and Stephen: Erotic Interludes in Political Transference. Lobban, Li-An: Wounded by War. Pugachevsky, Mariana: An MS Patient in My Office. Rozmarin, Dori: "O Thou Seer, Go, Flee Thee." Guralnik, Ede: Race, the Law, and I. Benjamin, Facing Reality Together: Discussion of "The Social Third." Part II: Interpellations. Guralnik, Raven: Travels in Reality. Hartman, Darren with Dominic: From the Social to the Psychic. Lobban, Glenys: White or Not. Rozmarin, David and Jonathan: The Hostility of Discourse. Pugachevsky, Amy: The Intersection of Body and History. Sheehy, Anonymous: Floaters. Orbach, Bringing History to Mind: Discussion of "Interpellations." Part III: Subjective Experience, Collective Narratives. Guralnik, Interpellating Grace. Hartman, Darren then Harvey: The Incest Taboo Reconsidered: The Collective Unconscious Reprised. Rozmarin, Asaf: I Am Yourself. Saketopoulou, DeShawn: Beyond the Color-blindness in Gender. Pugachevsky, Lynn, Ben, Lucy: Forbidden to Be. Lobban, Martha: Resignification Road. Samuels, Letters to the Authors: Discussion of "Subjective Experience, Collective Narratives."