Book Announcement by Elisabeth Hanscombe (Australia)

Hanscombe, E. (2025). The museum of failure. Hembury Books.

When it comes to trauma, our experience of the past impinges on the present. We’re haunted. Unable to enjoy life, our memories begin to resemble a museum of failure. Elisabeth Hanscombe’s memoir, The Museum of Failure (Hembury Books), takes readers on a deeply personal journey through Lis’s life, exploring her path into the therapeutic world. It intricately weaves together three significant institutions that shaped her experiences – the family, the church, and the psychoanalytic – offering a profound reflection on healing, identity, and transformation.

Elisabeth was ten years old when she first wished her father dead. If he were dead, there’d be no more troubles. The things he did to her sister in the night left her fearful of when her turn would come. She looked to her mother for help, but she was immobilised and in terror, and did not protect her children. She hid from her husband’s abuse in Catholicism and books.

As an adult, Elisabeth climbed the ranks of psychology into the silent chambers of the psychoanalytic world. Psychoanalysis helped her make sense of her mind and other emotional scars. But after three years of practice, the analysts abruptly dismissed Elisabeth from their training to become one of them.

The Museum of Failure is the story of how the analytical patriarchy, in its zeal to be more Freud-like than Freud, inspired Elisabeth’s drive to understand it and undo the damage.

hemburybooks.com.au/author-elisabeth-hanscombe/

Podcast discussion: https://soundcloud.com/highbrowlowlife/ru348-lis-hanscombe-on-the

Elisabeth Hanscombe, Ph.D. is a psychologist and writer who explores notions of memory, shame and trauma. Her 2012 thesis on “Life Writing and the Desire for Revenge” looks into this often-unrecognised motivation, revenge, as a spur to creativity. Her first memoir, The Art of Disappearing, offers an unforgettable account of what it is like to grow up around a violent and abusive father whose brooding menace lurks on every page. The book throws light on a family’s troubled and hidden life in Melbourne Australia during the 1960s. Elisabeth blogs at https://sixthinline.com

Elisabeth Hanscombe, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Email Elisabeth Hanscombe