Coming Soon—April 30th, 2024!
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Both new and seasoned psychotherapists wrestle with the relationship between psychological distress and inequality across race, class, gender, and sexuality. How does one address this organically in psychotherapy? What role does it play in therapeutic action? Who brings it up, the therapist or the patient?
Daniel José Gaztambide addresses these questions by offering a rigorous decolonial approach that rethinks theory and technique from the ground up, providing an accessible, evidence-informed reintroduction to psychoanalytic practice. He re-examines foundational thinkers from three traditions―Freudian, relational-interpersonal, and Lacanian―through the lens of revolutionary psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, and offers a detailed analysis of Fanon’s psychoanalytic practice.
Drawing on rich yet grounded discussions of theory and research, Gaztambide presents a clinical model that facilitates exploration of the social in the clinical space in a manner intimately related to the patient’s presenting problem. In doing so, this book demonstrates that clinicians no longer have to choose between attending to the personal, interpersonal, or sociopolitical. It is a guide to therapeutic action “on the couch,” which envisions political action “off the couch” and in the streets. Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique provides a comprehensive, practice-oriented and compelling guide for students, practitioners, and scholars of critical, multicultural and decolonial approaches to psychotherapy.
ADVANCE REVIEWS FOR Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique:
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In Praise of Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique:
“Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique is compelling and practical… This book is a gift to psychotherapists and an open call to embrace political action.”
―Hector Y. Adames, PsyD, Professor, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology; Co-Director, IC-RACE Lab (Immigration, Critical Race, And Cultural Equity)
“Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique: Putting Freud on Fanon’s Couch is simply an exquisite and groundbreaking intellectual achievement. Theoretically nuanced, erudite without pretention, and wonderfully committed, engagé as Fanon and Sartre would say, this extraordinary work reveals the complex struggles between that from which we seek to be liberated on one hand and the challenge of building our freedom on the other. Gaztambide has written a brilliant decolonial theorizing of psychoanalysis and its genealogy, offering a powerful portrait from which we all can learn and, most importantly, grow. Every page is a gem for anyone seeking to understand the complexity and liberating significance of therapeutic action in the quest for no less than livable life.”
—Lewis R. Gordon, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Global Affairs, University of Connecticut, author of Fear of Black Consciousness
“Gaztambide’s revolutionary intervention fills an important gap in analytic literature by focusing on decolonial psychoanalytic technique, accomplished through carefully unpacking clinical case studies from his practice and beyond.”
―Robert K. Beshara, Assistant Professor of Psychology & Humanities, Northern New Mexico College, author of Decolonial Psychoanalysis: Towards Critical Islamophobia Studies and Freud and Said: Contrapuntal Psychoanalysis as Liberation Praxis
“Gaztambide is one of our field’s foremost scholars of Frantz Fanon [sketching] what a ‘decolonial psychoanalysis’ might look like… a clinical approach that attends to matters of racial and other difference, no matter the identities of patient and therapist.”
―Steve Botticelli, Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychology, NYU, co-editor of First Do No Harm: The Paradoxical Encounters of Psychoanalysis, Warmaking, and Resistance
“Gaztambide has broken through an impasse that has kept many of us psychotherapists feeling that we’ve left out half the job we would have liked to take on: to address the larger social world’s role in generating personal suffering.”
―Neil Altman, Faculty, Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, author of The Analyst in the Inner City: Race, Class and Culture through a Psychoanalytic Lens, and White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives
“Freud’s self-analysis is terminated in order for him to spend some time on Fanon’s couch… Gaztambide makes a major contribution to the emergent radical spirit of psychoanalysis.”
―Elliot Jurist, Professor of Psychology and Philosophy at the Graduate Center and The City College of New York, CUNY, author of Minding Emotions: Cultivating Mentalization in Psychotherapy
“Gaztambide has produced an authorial, eminently readable, and fascinating account of the relationships between the contemporary psychoanalytic clinic and anti-coloniality. His book is a remarkable achievement which deserves to be read, enjoyed, and cited for years to come.”
―Sinan Richards, British Academy Research Fellow, King’s College London
“What would psychoanalysis look like if it assumed intrapsychic realities derive not only from our relationships but also the social and political conditions in which we exist? Gaztambide imagines such a psychoanalysis in this bold and passionate book, demonstrating the clinical processes at work in a decolonial psychoanalysis construed as a preferential option for the marginalized.”
―Celia Brickman, Faculty, Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Therapy, author of Race in Psychoanalysis
“‘The couch is ours,’ asserts Gaztambide… The foundations of psychoanalysis ‘from below’ have been laid out, and we can now take on the vital task of building the decolonial practice of the future.”
―Elizabeth Danto, Professor of Social Welfare Emeritus, Hunter College-CUNY, author of Freud’s Free Clinics: Psychoanalysis and Social Justice, 1918-1938
“Gaztambide subjects Freud, Ferenczi, and Lacan to a decolonizing analysis guided by Fanon, narrating a personal trip demonstrating how white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and CISheteropatriarchy exercised violent control over psychoanalysis. This is done gracefully, resulting in a easy-to-read account welcoming readers with varying levels of knowledge, helping us untangle the complex weave of psyche-culture that undergird the work of psychotherapy.”
―Katie Gentile, Professor and Chair, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, author and editor of The Business of Being Made: The temporalities of reproductive technologies, in psychoanalysis and culture
“This timely book provides a courageous lens to examine the crises in American psychoanalysis. Gaztambide’s goal of decolonizing psychoanalytic technique, and I add theory, is a formidable undertaking for which he does a commendable job, laying out the groundwork drawn out by the the Holmes Commission Final Report. This text is superbly written for graduate students, candidates and senior analysts to benefit from and I highly recommend it to all in our field.”
―Kirkland C. Vaughans, Adjunct Professor at the Derner School of Psychology, Member, Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis, featured in Black Psychoanalysts Speak
“Here is a psychoanalysis that integrates the intersection of interpersonal affiliation and social hierarchies, but centers the role of race, class, culture, ethnicity and sexual orientation in human experience. A must read!”
―Steven Knoblauch, Adjunct Associate Professor at The New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, author of Bodies and Social Rhythms: Navigating Unconscious Vulnerability and Emotional Fluidity
“… this volume is rich with accounts of what got lost along the way of developing technique when it comes to race, class, gender, and sexuality. A broad sociogenic assessment is necessary, not so much for our patients, but for ourselves collectively.”
―Rossanna Echegoyen, LCSW, Faculty, Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis
“This is an extraordinary treatise. Gaztambide… not only develops a rich decolonial theory, but with brilliance guides us through its clinical application, navigating his own feelings and dilemmas with aplomb and sensitivity, a complex explication of intersectionality in action. It is as if we are witnessing an embodiment of Fanon in today’s world.”
―Melanie Suchet, Faculty, New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, co-editor of Relational Psychoanalysis: Volume 3―New Voices