Book Announcement by Mark Gerald (USA)
Psychoanalyst and photographer Mark Gerald’s insightful personal writings and artfully composed photographs come together in this Routledge book to form a complex portrait of psychoanalysis today. This publication represents the culmination of Gerald’s 15-year project of photographing psychoanalysts in their offices across 27 cities and ten countries.
Gerald writes about his intersecting life as a psychoanalyst and photographer, “I have always been interested in seeing people in their surface appearance, and in the deeper sense of who they are. Both psychoanalysts and photographers try to attain a vision of their subjects that is rich in the complexity and interaction between what is shown and what is concealed. Attending to how people present themselves in their facial expressions, body language, attire, and what they chose to surround themselves with can result in a clearer picture of the multifaceted nature of the self.”
Part memoir, part history, part case study, and part self-analysis, In the Shadow of Freud’s Couch showcases a diversity of analysts: male and female, classical and contemporary. The book explores how the growing variety in both analysts and patient groups, and changes in schools of thought, are reflected in these intimate spaces, and how the choices analysts make in their office arrangements can have real effects on treatment. Along with the presentation of over 50 environmental portraits of psychoanalysts in their offices, Gerald explores the powerful relational foundations of theory and clinical technique, the mutually vulnerable patient-analyst connection, and the history of the psychoanalytic office.
Mark Gerald, Ph.D. is a practicing psychoanalyst and trained photographer based in the USA who has written, presented, and taught widely about the visual dimension of psychoanalysis. He is a faculty member of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies, the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, and the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy.
Mark Gerald, Ph.D.
211 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024
Email Mark Gerald
markgeraldphoto.com