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.

Dr Margaret Lush trained as a child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Tavistock and has worked in clinical and educational settings. She has taught on several Tavistock courses and is currently Joint Course Lead for the Tavistock pre-clinical training course for child psychotherapists. She works in private practice and supervises in Britain and abroad. Kate Robertson trained as a child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Tavistock and became Head of Child Psychotherapy in Hammersmith and Fulham CAMHS, Course Lead for the Tavistock Psychoanalytic Studies course, and Chair of the Association of Child Psychotherapists. She had to retire early because of health concerns and passed away in October 2023.

Introduction Part I. Learning through infant observation 1. Teaching infant observation 2. Sam: Observations and reflections on the first eighteen months of life 3. An exploration of a nursery song "The Police Dog" as a container 4."Mother-less": a psychoanalytic observation of an installation by Cathy Wilkes 5. The is-ness of things: reflections on observation used in contexts where words are hard to find Part II. Poetry 6. "This is not for tears: thinking"-poetry and psychoanalysis in orbit 7. "Of Mutability", mourning, and containment 8. Resistance through mourning: a poem by Mahmoud Darwish "In Her Absence I Created Her Image" Part III. Literature and the performing arts 9. The teaching of drama, psychoanalysis, and society on the Psychoanalytic Studies course 10. Rockaby: Eros and Thanatos 11. The narcissistic world of Turandot 12. Identity, identification, and narcissistic phantasy in the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro Part IV. Contemporary life 13. Psy's "Gentleman": between the ugly and the beautiful 14. Living the dream: a psychoanalytic exploration of the sport of BASE jumping 15. The hidden inner world of littering 16. Beyond competence in social work: where are we now? Afterword