What Are You Reading Now?

Welcome to eForum's new column "What Are You Reading Now?"

This column is an opportunity for IAPSP members to share what they are reading or have recently read. Both fiction and non-fiction are welcome. If you would like to participate, please email me at . In the meantime, enjoy reading the responses of your fellow members.
 
 

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Estelle Shane

Geographical Location: Los Angeles, California

Psychoanalytic and Academic Affiliations: Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles - Founding Member, Past-President, Training and Supervising Analyst, Faculty Member; UCLA Department of Psychiatry, Faculty member.

Relationship to IAPSP: Founding Member and Immediate Past-President

What Are You Reading Now?: I want to say by way of introduction that I'm happy to be contributing to this column, initiating this process, because I'm selfishly hopeful that i will soon be reading the contributions of others. I'm always interested in what others are reading, being one of those people who steals surreptitious glances at the titles of books people in a waiting room or on an airplane are reading, even when I barely know, or don't know at all, the person or persons who are doing the reading.. I imagine that knowing what a person reads will either tell me something about that person or will offer up something new for me to read. Or I'm curious, or just plain nosey. But in any case, I suspect that for these reasons this may become my favorite column in our eForum.

I also want to note that when I say "reading" I mean either listening to the book on tape, reading it on my I-pad or Kindle, or actually holding the hard or soft-cover book in my own hands. One of the things I love now is that literature comes in so many forms and can be done everywhere no matter what else you're doing. So, to the point finally, what am I reading?

I've been on a going-back-to-the-classics kick, and have recently read Emma (loved) and Persuasion (not so much) by Jane Austen, and Wings of the Dove and The Ambassadors by Henry James, always favorites. I've just finished After Nightfall by Michael Cunningham (which is among the best books I've read recently) and am now reading Chronic City by Jonathan Letham and, because I'm on a James kick, The Empty Family, by Colm Tolbin.

The book that I enjoyed reading the most over the past six months is the Booker Prize winning novel Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. It is an historical novel about the Tudor period in England, and is focused on the life of Thomas Cromwell and his relationship with Thomas Woolsey. The history of the times is fascinating, but what made me love this book was the depiction of the characters that live through its pages. I became so familiar with these people, came to know them, their inner and outer lives so well, that I truly mourned the ending of this long book and the loss of their company. I had never read anything by Hilary Mantel before. Since I've read several of her earlier works, but to my mind they didn't compare. I'd love to hear what others felt about Wolf Hall.

Jim Fosshage

Geographical Location: New York City

Psychoanalytic and Academic Affiliations: Co-founder, National Institute for the Psychotherapies and the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, and Clinical Professor of Psychology, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis?

Relationship to IAPSP: Past President of IAPSP

What Are You Reading Now?: I dip fairly regularly into a book by Allan Paivio: Mind and its Evolution: A Dual Coding Theoretical Approach (2006). Allan Paivio is an highly knowledgable cognitive scientist who first formulated in 1970 a dual coding theory for memory and processing (which he called the imagistic and verbal modes). It is a masterful book on how the mind works and its evolution!

Ronald R Lee

Geographical Location: Melbourne, Australia

Psychoanalytic and Academic Affiliations: Lecturer, Melbourne University Psychiatry Department and Honorary Consulting Psychologist at St. Vincent Hospital's Mental Health. President, Empathink Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (EAPSP)

Relationship to IAPSP: Council Member, IAPSP

What Are You Reading Now?: Schindler's List, (1982, Sceptre) by the Australian author Thomas Keneally. My wife picked it up on a Used Book Table for 50 cents. I had seen the movie and knew the story, but the book helped me put myself into the shoes of European Jews during the Nazi era better than anything else I have read - and I have read a lot about World War II. It dramatically portrays the weaknesses of any dictatorial system - its corruptability, cruelty, and susceptibility to delusional thinking.

Another book picked up on the Used Book Table (for 50 cents) was the Autobiography of Brian Humphries (1992, Penguin) the Australian comedian who is best known for his character Edna Everage. He was my contemporary at Melbourne University in the 1950s. As a confessed alcoholic he is an interesting person for Australian classes in psychotherapy to understand empathically.

Donna Orange's book, Thinking for Clinicians: Philosophical Resources for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Humanistic Psychotherapies (2010, Routledge), was a lot more than 50 cents, but worth every dollar. It introduces us to, and helps makes sense of, the modern philosophers: Buber, Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and Gadamer. I particularly have been challenged to read more on Levinas and his concept of ethical behavior as a response to the face of a neighbor in need. Donna also presented this material in Melbourne six months ago and was very well received.

Dietrick Bonhoeffer: A Biography, by his brother-in-law Eberhard Bethge, (2000, Fortress Press) was a 1000 pages of bedside reading that covered the life of this Lutheran Theologian who joined the German Abwehr during World War II and the conspiracy to kill Hitler. If Schindler dealt with Nazification by corrupting it, Boenhoeffer fought against the Nazification of the Lutheran Church by attempting to help establish the Lutheran Confessional Church. What interested me, from my training in Tillichian theology, was how Boenhoeffer fought the Nazifiers in the clergy through his use of theology, particulary focusing on and emphasizing Christology.

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