Irreverence and Psychoanalysis

'Irreverence and Psychoanalysis is a volume with the bravery to say what psychoanalysis has always known but often forgotten: truth flourishes in unsettlement, creativity is bound up with transgression, and our deepest work relies on the freedom to question what we hold sacred. This book is remarkably vital, bold but not reckless, thoughtful but not timid, and unafraid to venture into the fraught spaces where the political, the personal, and the clinical intersect. Throughout its pages, the authors show how irreverence may be a form of ethical seriousness, a protest against hypocrisy, and an enlivening source of renewal in a world that feels increasingly fragile. It is delightful to encounter a volume that makes one think harder while also allowing us to breathe easier. This one does just that, inviting us to consider irreverence but also to practice it as a mode of more complete encounter with each other and with the field of psychoanalysis itself.'

Tom Wooldridge, PsyD, ABPP, CEDS-C, Professor of Psychology at Golden Gate University, Personal and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC), and Training Analyst, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (SFCP).

'Irreverence may not win you many friends, but it remains essential to a creative and engaging life in psychoanalysis. An irreverent approach is not the same as disrespect. One can value established methods, while also questioning their relevance—a dialectic that acknowledges history and precedent. Today’s psychoanalysis too often splits itself into distinct sects, each claiming its own version of ultimate truth. Yet true irreverence resists this pull toward doctrinal certainty. Instead, it has the potential to invite us into mystery. Analysts are drawn to the experience of awe: the vastness of a star-filled sky, the hush of a cathedral, the paradoxes of quantum physics, the unfathomable nature of consciousness. These encounters with wonder may, paradoxically, carry greater therapeutic potential than the reverent pursuit of conventionally packaged theory.

Drs. Petrucelli and Schoen—two senior analysts and prolific authors— gather a set of stimulating and provocative essays that explore how irreverence engages psychoanalysis’ promise. I am delighted to endorse this work, which closely reflects my own perspective. It is a book that can expand one's outlook and make the analytic enterprise more exciting, more engaging, and ultimately more clinically effective.'

Edgar A. Levenson, MD, Fellow Emeritus, Training, Supervising Analyst, Faculty at the William Alanson White Institute; Winner of the 2006 Mary S. Sigourney Award, Author of over 110 publications, including Fallacy of Understanding (1972), The Ambiguity of Change (1983) and The Purloined Self (2016).

'What a delightful moment for subversion! Petrucelli and Schoen, editors of this wonderful text, invite us to venture beyond the safe and toward the quicksand that surrounds our psychoanalytic field, our country, and the world today. Feast on its riches and treat it like the Italian slow food movement, savor, rather than devour it. And go back for another tasting menu tomorrow.'

Joyce Slochower, PhD, ABPP, Faculty NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis; Author of Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken (2024).

'From Freud’s era to the present, an irreverent aesthetic captures the best of what psychoanalysis has to offer—challenging orthodoxy, deconstructing norms, and questioning received wisdoms. In this important volume, Petrucelli and Schoen bring together a remarkable multiplicity of voices to deftly explore this territory, opening the space between tradition and innovation, past and present, the familiar and the strange. Prepare to be alternately destabilized, enticed, and provoked as these chapters transform what has often felt inevitable into a world of as yet to be imagined possibilities. A profound contribution to the field.'

Galit Atlas, PhD, Author of Emotional Inheritance, Faculty NYU Postdoctoral Program for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis.