Table of Contents

Introduction: Psychoanalysis is not what you think

1 Science: Avoiding analysis of the mind

2 Sex: Avoiding analysis of the body

3 Schisms: Avoiding analytic politics

4 Teaching: Avoiding analytic practice

5 Society: Engaging with the British Tradition

6 Conversations: Taking care of health

7 Therapy: Closer encounters

8 Research: Studying and experiencing

9 Training: In Group Analysis

10 Personal: Training analysis

11 Diagnosis: Clinical structures

12 Supervision: Confession and confidentiality

13 Enlightenment: Second nature in Brazil

14 Trauma: Truth and reconciliation

15 Theory: Žižek, culture and the clinic

16 Identification: Laibach and the state

17 Japan: A limit case for analysis

18 Queer: From Russia with love

19 Islam: Faith in Freud

20 Transference: Ethics in action

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Ian Parker is a psychoanalyst in Manchester, UK, Honorary Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, Secretary of Manchester Psychoanalytic Matrix, and President of the College of Psychoanalysts, UK.

Reviews

"Professor Ian Parker, a significant intellectual, has much to teach us. This remarkably frank memoir – captivatingly written – will provide a very helpful insight into so many aspects of psychoanalysis – both its attractions and, even, its occasional repulsions." --Professor Brett Kahr, Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, London"Ian Parker’s wide-ranging discussion of psychoanalysis in international contexts is dazzling in approach, tonality, and themes and presents readers with a history of the problems of response and change. Parker gives us a new approach to the psychoanalytic field through his longstanding development and this is a major contribution." –Professor Deborah Britzman, FRSC, York University, Canada"From his student years, Ian Parker began searching for alternatives to the shortcomings of mainstream psychology, and this book is the riveting story of how he grappled with the complex diversities of psychoanalytic thought, eventually becoming a Lacanian analyst himself. Parker’s erudite and pellucid prose makes this essential reading for anyone pondering the persisting potential and possible pitfalls of deploying psychoanalytic narratives, especially in political contexts, as he takes us on rollicking journeys through Brazil, Korea, Russia and Japan, while debating with queer theory, Judaism and Islam along the way." --Professor Lynne Segal, Birkbeck, author, Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy