Exploring Psychoanalytic Concepts through Culture, the Arts and Contemporary Life

This book explores how psychoanalytic ideas and thinking enhance our understanding and engagement with the creative arts and contemporary life.

Many of us love to read poetry and novels and enjoy the performing arts. All of us take part in contemporary life. But how might a psychoanalytic perspective deepen our understanding or enhance our experience in these areas? What might we discover when we explore the unconscious dimensions of particular cultural artefacts and activities? Based on the work of the longstanding Psychoanalytic Studies course at the Tavistock, contributing authors draw on their experience of infant observation and psychoanalytic theory and apply them to explorations of culturally diverse and wide-ranging topics such as social work, literature, the act of littering, a Palestinian poem, and even a chart-topping Korean pop song.

Blending a deep understanding of clinical work and a broad range of artistic endeavours, this book will be key reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and anyone interested in understanding how psychoanalysis can inform art and life.

'How might psychoanalytic ideas and thinking enhance our understanding and engagement with the creative arts and contemporary life?  Based on the work of the longstanding Psychoanalytic Studies Course at the Tavistock Clinic, this book provides a surprisingly fresh approach to exploring this question.

Rarely have I read a book that so captured my imagination ? exposing me to new and unexpected topics such as base jumping or the inner world of littering and to such culturally diverse subjects as a moving Palestinian poem or a chart-topping Korean pop video. Drawing on their experience of close observation of infants and psychoanalytic theory, the contributors to this book delve deep, eliciting the reader?s engagement.

I loved it! It is relevant and accessible to anyone interested in thinking more deeply about complex states of mind and the world we live in.'

Dr. Debbie Hindle, child and adolescent psychotherapist, Human Development Scotland

'This book illustrates how psychoanalytical skills developed through the experience of infant observation can be used in many cultural contexts from poetry and opera to music videos, extreme sports and social work. The idea that artists and imaginative writers are primary researchers into the mind, exploring psychic change, is held in focus throughout.

The use of material from infant observations is moving and non-judgmental, clearly showing how the inner world of the observer is affected by the experience of observation. The book explores the value and use of these affective responses to further our understanding of human interaction and cultural experience, as well as offer pointers for how individuals and organizations can foster self-reflective practice, consider anti-oppressive approaches, face our own racism, shift from tracking achievement of competence to understanding the process of learning with all its uncertainties and anxieties.

This is important reading for those working in public and private sectors'

Susanne Lansman, PhD, poet, and fellow of British Psychoanalytical Society.