Dear IARPP Colleagues,

I’m pleased to bring you the latest edition of the IARPP Bookshelf, arriving just before the start of our Annual Conference.

This issue features no fewer than eight newly published books. There are volumes of collected papers from the theoretical and clinical writings of Dianne Elise and Irwin Hirsch: Elise explores the centrality of the erotic in the analytic field with respect to both clinical vitality and creative energy, whereas Hirsch continues limning the implications of the idiosyncratic personhood of the analyst and the emotional symmetries that often obtain between patient and more-human-than-otherwise analyst.

Sandra Buechler offers a new volume of her rich psychoanalytic reflections, drawing on the wisdom of interpersonal theory as well as lessons and supervision to be mined from poetry and fiction. A primer on intersubjective self psychology is offered by George Hagman and Harry Paul.

Pamela Cooper-White has two new books: a co-edited volume on the neglected Sabina Spielrein, featuring Spielrein’s theoretical innovations as well as stories from her life and from the beginnings of psychoanalysis; as well as collected essays on violence against women, covering such topics as sexual abuse and trauma, domestic violence, and clergy abuse. The impacts of trauma and abuse is taken up as well by Clara Mucci, whose monograph on the treatment of severe borderline and narcissistic disorders locates itself at the nexus of affect regulation and neurobiology as expressed principally in the body.

Among the chapters, papers and presentations featured, you’ll want to focus some attention on the latest mother-infant research from Beatrice Beebe and her associates; you may also enjoy an interview she’s done on decoding babies’ nonverbal language, posted on youtube.com. As a companion to the Spielrein book mentioned above, a recent presentation brought attention to a similarly-neglected female analyst, Marie Langer.

A wide range of contributions focus on various aspects of traumatology, including: the vexed care of traumatized (U.S.) armed-service veterans; an analytic investigation of caring for a sick and disabled child; work with Holocaust survivors; an unpacking of the disaster of colonial narcissism via Winnicott and Khan’s work on trauma; as well as trauma work that draws from Bionian concepts and Levinasian ethics.

Finally, for an intriguing change of pace, drop in on the experimental performance piece devised by Steve Benson and colleague in which their improvised text chats — discursive, overlapping, exasperating, yearning — are transcribed as a sort of found poetry, evoking a unique form of relational play with tension, (missed) connection, and growth. It may call to mind episodes from some of your more confounding and outlandish clinical work.

As you begin to embark on your summer reading list (or, for those beneath the equator, your winter pickings), I hope you’ll make some space to acquaint yourself with contributions from IARPP members whose names may be new to you, and that you’ll engage with the latest output from some welcome familiar voices as well. There’s no shortage of fascinating material herein.

Congratulations to all our creative and scholarly IARPP members on your contributions to the literature of our field, and Happy Reading to one and all.

I welcome your submissions for the next IARPP Bookshelf edition; the submission deadline is September 8, 2019. Please include the following materials with your submission:

1. Title of your recent or upcoming publication or presentation
2. Brief description of its content (such as an abstract)
3. Link to a publisher (if applicable) so that members might access or purchase a copy
4. Book cover photo or artwork (if applicable)
5. Digital photograph of yourself (jpeg format)
6. Professional contact information as you would like it to appear publicly for our readers (email and mailing address)
7. For presentations, please include location and spell out any acronyms
8. Please note that we do not publish announcements of Annual Conference presentations

Submissions should be emailed to Matt.Aibel [@] gmail.com.

Thanks and best wishes,

Matt Aibel, LCSW
New York City