How to Be Intimate with 15,000,000 Strangers is an investigation into how the fields of mental health and media can work together more collaboratively. Drawing upon his extensive experience in media psychoanalysis, Brett Kahr explores how a rich collaboration with radio, television, film, and other forms of public outreach can be accomplished while also embracing the weight and gravitas of depth psychology. In addition to describing his work as Resident Psychotherapist at the B.B.C., Kahr also examines the ways in which references to the media enter the consulting room and provide clinicians with important insights about hidden aspects of the minds of their patients. Moreover, he investigates the historical hesitancy of psychoanalysts – experts in confidentiality – to engage with such a public arena as the media, thus providing important insights about how one can collaborate broadly and loudly while also maintaining one’s ethical commitment to silence and privacy. This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and anyone intrigued by the intersection between media and psychoanalysis.

Expanding Psychoanalysis explores the work of the acclaimed psychoanalyst, writer, and activist Susie Orbach. The book studies Orbach’s multifaceted career in five sections, examining her multitudinous contributions to the mental health profession, from the creation of feminist psychotherapy to the enhancement of media psychology, to the growth of political and social consultation. The book contains clinical, historical, and personal chapters, examining Orbach from a range of perspectives. Each chapter investigates a key aspect of Orbach’s work and its impact on the professional, the social, and the personal level. The book concludes with an epilogue by Orbach herself. Expanding Psychoanalysis will be essential for all readers interested in the work of Susie Orbach.

Forensic Psychoanalysis examines the traumatic psychological origins of violence and explores the ways in which such disasters can be prevented and treated. The book encapsulates Professor Brett Kahr’s lengthy career in the field of forensic mental health, investigating all aspects of this vital arena, from the history of criminality to the current-day application of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy to the care of rapists, arsonists, genital exhibitionists, paedophiles, and murderers. This gripping text surveys more than one century of literature on the psychotherapeutic treatment of the criminally insane and provides tremendous insight into how mental health professionals can contribute to the reduction of global violence. Forensic Psychoanalysis will be crucial for all readers interested in both the prevention of criminality and its psychological treatment.

In this compellingly written and meticulously researched new book, Professor Brett Kahr draws upon extensive unpublished archival sources and upon his four decades of oral history interviews to paint fascinating portraits of many of the icons of mental health. Unearthing Freud's Death Bed and Laing's Missing Tooth: Hidden Histories of British Psychoanalysis includes detailed accounts of Kahr's interviews with such noted figures as Enid Balint, Marion Milner, Ronald Laing, John Bowlby and his wife, Ursula Longstaff Bowlby, as well as numerous members of Donald Winnicott's family. Framed as a series of glimpses into the early history of British psychoanalysis, Kahr explores how the German-speaking Sigmund Freud learned how to psychoanalyse English-speaking patients; how Enid Eichholz (the future wife of Michael Balint) pioneered couple psychoanalysis in the wake of the Second World War; how Donald Winnicott treated "The Piggle" in the midst of his own health crises; and how Masud Khan degenerated from a clinical sage into an anti-Semite. A breathtaking combination of interviews, reminiscences, and well-documented scholarship, this book provides a gripping overview of many of the key figures in British psychoanalysis, all of whom made unparalleled contributions to the mental health profession, and whose lives and careers deserve to be visited and revisited.

Formative Media presents a psychoanalytic and psychosocial inquiry into the significance of the most widely used digital platforms – including Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter (X), and Instagram – and the relational styles that users cultivate and habituate in their interplay with these platforms. Steffen Krüger assesses the formative effects of these platforms, considering who we are and how we are becoming who we are in relation to, as well as mediated through, digital platforms. The book considers Facebook in conversation with the Freudian theory of Eros and the Live/Love drive, then homes in on the primitive forms of orality, attachment, dependence, and symbiosis in relation to YouTube. Krüger then expands the discussion of orality with an inquiry into the notions of mastery, control, and domination that Google unfolds and activates in its search function, considers narcissism in the context of Instagram, and examines hate speech and aggression on Twitter. The book focuses on the most salient, most talked about aspects, features, and activities of commercial, corporate social media culture to inquire into the formational pushes and pulls of these activities in their contexts for our subjectivities and sense of self. Showing in detail how digital media platforms have advanced into central “socialisation agencies,” Formative Media will be of great interest to academics and scholars of psychoanalytic, psychocultural, and psychosocial theory, critical digital media studies, and interactional theory.

In this haunting novel, Nicoletta is drawn to Jethro from the moment she sees him. But Jethro is no ordinary teenager--he's part boy and part beast.

Today’s headlines are filled with increasingly alarming accounts of abuse by coaches, religious leaders, institutional caregivers, family members, and others. Abuse in Society provides an illuminating and timely introduction to the physical, emotional/psychological, and sexual faces of abuse. The text presents a much-needed, in-depth assessment of child maltreatment, intimate partner violence, abuse by clergy, abuse of the elderly and disabled, and abuse in sports. Among the specific problems covered are bullying and sibling abuse, courtship violence and date rape, and abuse in the relationships of sexual minorities. The author explores these complex issues using an ecological approach, examining interacting explanations from a variety of perspectives and levels of analysis: societal and cultural, family, and individual. The author’s down-to-earth, conversational style is easy to understand, and his work is exceptionally well researched and thoroughly documented. Those who are pursuing careers in the fields of sociology, psychology, psychiatry, and human-service professions such as social work, pastoral counseling, mental health counseling, marriage and family therapy, and psychiatric nursing will find this text valuable. End-of-chapter resources include a Review Guide, Critical Thinking Questions, Recommended Reading, Internet Resources, and Suggested Activities.