Book Announcement by Danielle Knafo (USA)

In Sex, Drugs, and Creativity: Searching for Magic in a Disenchanted World, Dustin Kahoud and Danielle Knafo take a close look at omnipotent fantasies in three domains: sex, drugs, and creativity. Kahoud and Knafo demonstrate how these fantasies emerge and how artists draw on them to both create and destroy – sometimes simultaneously – and how understanding this can help psychoanalysts work more effectively with these individuals.

Using the personal statements of influential artists and entertainers in addition to clinical material, the authors examine the omnipotence of self-destruction as it contends with that of creative artists. They argue that creative artists use omnipotent fantasies to imagine the world differently. This enables them to produce their art, but it also leaves these artists vulnerable to addiction. Chapters devoted to Stephen King and Anne Sexton demonstrate the ways these artists used drugs and alcohol to fuel imagination and inspire creative output while simultaneously doing harm to themselves. A detailed case study also demonstrates successful clinical work with a creative substance abuser.

https://www.routledge.com/Sex-Drugs-and-Creativity-Searching-for-Magic-in-a-Disenchanted-World/Kahoud-Knafo/p/book/9781138956094

Danielle Knafo is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. She is a professor at Long Island University and New York University. She has written and lectured extensively on the subjects of trauma, creativity, and sexuality. Her most recent book, The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis and Culture (Routledge, 2017), recently received the American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Price (theoretical category).

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