Notes on Psychoanalysis is a collection of twenty essays on psychoanalytic themes. Written in an accessible style, it is readable by a total newcomer to the subject while also being relevant to clinicians, trainees, patients and students from different disciplines. While many of the essays focus on clinical questions, they also speak about art, comedy, fashion, fame and fiction. Freud and Lacan are central points of reference, but the book as a whole is far from doctrinaire, with all areas of psychoanalytic theory being up for discussion. Clinical topics include acting out, narcissism, gender, transference, diagnosis, and the oedipus complex, tracing the ideas through Freud and the post-freudians, and examining their relevance to the contemporary psychoanalytic clinic. Non-clinical topics include Louise Bourgeois’s notes on her analysis, the phenomenon of stand-up comedy and the humiliation of the audience, Paris Hilton’s televised friendship auditions, and Ben Stiller’s comic masculinity in Zoolander. While each essay is self-contained, the book overall argues for the continued relevance of Freudian ideas in the treatment of psychic suffering, as well as in the interpretation of social and cultural phenomena. Reviews and Endorsements: "The entertainment value of this lively book cleverly disguises the complex issues it teaches.Anouchka Grose discusses scholarly subjects amusingly and amusing questions in a scholarly way.This book is enlightened by her refusal to admire the emperor’s new clothes, and painstakingly acquired knowledge is conveyed with deceptive ease. In addition, her many clinical illustrations give the book credibility – these are not the ramblings of an armchair analyst but the reflections of a practitioner of the unconscious."
- Lionel Bailly, UCL Psychoanalysis Unit "From Anxiety to Zoolander by way of family and fashion, suicide and war and much, much more! This is no dictionary of psychoanalytic concepts. It is no map, no guide to psychoanalysis. Rather, Grose’s selection of her talks gives the reader an insight into how a practicing psychoanalyst engages with thorny issues of everyday life as well as the controversies and differences that have characterized psychoanalysis and clinical practice since its inception. Those readers who are new to Lacan’s ideas will welcome the clarity of the writing that elucidates difficult concepts and ideas without eluding their complexities. Those readers who are practitioners, or in training as psychoanalysts and therapists, will particularly appreciate the honesty of the clinical examples that illustrate Grose’s ideas and ways of thinking. This elegant and sophisticated collection of “talks” captures the maddening and provoking character of psychoanalytic practice and knowledge and should be read by anyone with a passing interest in psychoanalysis, and what it might have to say about the problems of everyday life, as well as by those who are already captured by psychoanalytic ideas and the impossibilities of the clinic."
- Anne Worthington, Centre for Psychoanalysis , Middlesex University Table of Contents: Acknowledgements
About the Author
Introduction 1) Acting out
2) Anxiety
3) Cure
4) Family
5) Fashion
6) Gender
7) Jokes
8) Mirror
9) Neurosis
10) Objects
11) Oedipus
12) Suicide
13) Time
14) Transference
15) The uncanny
16) War
17) Wishes
18) Zoolander References
Index About the Author: Anouchka Grose is a practising psychoanalyst and member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, where she regularly gives lectures. She is the author of two novels, and a non-fiction book, No More Silly Love Songs: A Realist's Guide to Romance. She also writes for The Guardian and teaches at Camberwell School of Art. | 
