Welcome to Confer Books. We have reached our first birthday as a new publisher. Launching a publishing house during a pandemic has been both challenging and exhilarating, but we now have eleven wonderful books in print, and some exciting new additions this season. Included in the following pages are titles on intergenerational trauma, personality disorder, play-based child psychotherapy, a unique new book for the partners of suicide survivors, and Adam Phillips on ‘The Cure for Psychoanalysis’. We are dedicated to publishing contributions from the full range of schools of thought, particularly those from emerging and marginal voices. If you have an idea for a book and would like advice about taking the first steps towards publication, then please get in touch.
Christina Wipf Perry Publishing Director
All titles are available in paperback or eBook from all good booksellers including our sister company, www.karnacbooks.com
Contact Us To discuss a publishing idea or submit a proposal: christinawipfperry@confer.uk.com Media Enquiries: booksmarketing@confer.uk.com Trade Sales Enquiries: david@globalbooksales.co.uk
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BOOKS
The Cure for Psychoanalysis Adam Phillips ‘We know Adam Phillips to be a remarkable writer but in this wonderfully spirited book we discover he is also an endlessly interesting conversationalist. With his old friend, Ed Corrigan, as a talk-buddy, we are privy to dialogue as a form of performance art. There is genius here; there is good humor; there is joy. It doesn’t get better than this.’ Christopher Bollas, psychoanalyst, and author of Meaning and Melancholia, and The Shadow of the Object
This book presents a day long symposium with Adam Phillips and includes two brilliant essays that reveal what is at the heart of psychoanalysis – a practice that can enable both analyst and patient to live life more fully. The volume includes questions and commentaries which reflect the creative and open expression supported throughout the symposium. In this unique volume, Phillips works through psychoanalytic theories about cure, encouraging serious consideration of those ideas that allow the analyst and patient to marvel at and take pleasure in the unknowable adventure ahead of them.
June 2021 Paperback, £19.99 ISBN 978-1-913494-38-4
This volume was first released by ‘Wrong Way Publishing’ (2019, ISBN: 9780578479491).
Adam Phillips is a practicing psychoanalyst, formerly Principal Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital, London. He is General Editor of the Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations and the author of numerous works of psychoanalysis and literary criticism, including most recently On Wanting to Change, Attention Seeking, and Unforbidden Pleasures.
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How it Feels to be You Objects, Play and Child Psychotherapy Tamsin Cottis ‘Cottis’s illustrations and explanations of how a child therapist works flow seamlessly from events and processes in the session with the child and then, quite naturally, the drama of the session takes over – so the reader is never bored, always pulled along by the narrative, yet ever more informed. This is a beautiful book, describing beautiful work. Anne Alvarez, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and author of The Thinking Heart
‘This is a wonderful and engaging book. Tamsin is the therapist you’d want every child to have. I learnt so very much.’
May 2021 Paperback, £19.99 ISBN 978-1-913494-28-5
Dr. Susie Orbach, Psychoanalyst and author of Fat is a Feminist Issue, The Impossibility of Sex, and Bodies
Through the stories of individual children, this book illuminates the process of creative, play-based child psychotherapy. Each chapter focuses on a specific issue that brings a child or a young person to the therapy room and explores the use and meaning of particular objects and ‘object games.’ Through these insightful and dynamic stories, readers will gain a profound understanding of the healing power of play in the context of child psychotherapy.
Tamsin Cottis is a child psychotherapist and co-founder of Respond, the UK’s leading agency for psychotherapy and counselling for people with learning disabilities. She works in primary schools and in private practice, supporting children and young people with diverse needs.
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BOOKS
The Unanswered Self The Masterson Approach to the Healing of Personality Disorder Candace Orcutt ‘Dr. Orcutt’s brilliant, creative and theory-bent mind is more than evident in her new book, The Unanswered Self ... Her profound level of understanding of the works of Freud, Masterson, Winnicott and other psychodynamic and developmental theorists, and her experienced and deeply-felt knowledge of the impact of trauma on the developing self stand at the heart of this book … original answers to some very old and very deep clinical and theoretical questions.’ Judith Pearson, Ph.D., Director, The International Masterson Institute
James F. Masterson pioneered an innovative clinical approach to the dynamic psychotherapy of personality disorder. Masterson held that borderline, narcissistic, and schizoid conditions begin when growth of outer relationship and inner object relatedness is inhibited at focal stages of the development of the self. A therapeutic relationship addressed to the specific developmental needs of a troubled personality, he believed, frees the natural progress of the self toward fulfilment. This review of Masterson’s legacy cites his later integration of neurobiology as well as attachment theory and considers inclusion of such post-Masterson concepts as self-state theory. Clinical examples are offered throughout to illustrate this dynamic approach to a therapeutic challenge now at the forefront of today’s caseloads.
September 2021 Paperback, £44.95 ISBN 978-1-913494-32-2
Candace Orcutt, MA, PhD, holds a doctorate in Clinical Social Work, and is a certified psychoanalyst and widely published author. She teaches at the New Jersey Institute for training in Psychoanalysis. For twenty years she worked as an associate of James F. Masterson.
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Life After a Partner’s Suicide Attempt Francis McGivern Life After a Partner’s Suicide Attempt is the first publication to document in depth the lived experiences of the partners of individuals who have attempted to take their own lives. Although no one has died, the ramifications are, nonetheless, life-changing and permanent. Research in suicidology has paid virtually no attention to these partners, other than to explore their role as caregiver. Based on sensitive interviewing of partners, Dr. McGivern proposes a psychotherapeutic pathway towards recovery, discovering personal trauma, relationship injury, reactivation of adverse childhood experiences, ambiguous loss, boundary ambiguity, and finally post-traumatic growth. He highlights some implications for psychotherapy training and research and makes recommendations for practice and policy.
September 2021 Paperback, £19.99 ISBN 978-1-913494-34-6
Written with both the general reader and practitioners in mind, the author’s goal is to share the extensive insights he has gained through his research and in doing so, to give voice to partners worldwide who silently endure the aftermath of their loved one’s suicide attempt. Contents: 1. The Inspiration for This Book 2. Suffering the Trauma of The Attempt: “It Put Nearly Ten Years on My Life” 3. Adjusting in the Wake of the Attempt: “It Shifted the Whole World on Its Axis” 4. The Legacy of the Attempt: “It Never Goes Away” 5. Setting the Scene: What We Know About Attempted Suicide and Its Impact on Others 6. Charting the Transformative Impact on Partners 7. Offering a New Pathway of Care for Partners and Significant Others
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Dr Francis McGivern is a counselling psychologist chartered by the Psychological Society of Ireland. He works both in the public sector within a Higher Education Institute as well as running a small private practice. He has over 20 years’ experience providing psychotherapy to both adults and emerging adults.
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BOOKS
Resilience and Survival: Understanding and Healing Intergenerational Trauma Clara Mucci Resilience stands at the limits of what it means to be human. The opposite of vulnerability, it defines qualities that are both relational and innately enforced. Mucci explores contemporary therapeutic approaches to intergenerational trauma, focusing on the key principles that can foster resilience and healing. She looks through the prism of attachment, neuroscience, memory, literary memoir and other frameworks to ask what traits constitute a predisposition to resilience – in individuals, and in society. Contents: 1. Resilience and survival: still nurturing life at the limits of the human
October 2021 Paperback, £12.99 ISBN: 978-1-913494-10-0
2. Unelaborated truths and the rewriting of history as trauma 3. Morality and human development after Auschwitz 4. First pillar towards resilience: attachment 5. Second pillar: connectedness 6. Third pillar: memory 7. Fourth pillar: testimony 8. Fifth pillar: empathic communities in place of narcissism 9. Sixth pillar: education and learning in place of artificial intelligence 10. Seventh pillar: healing through therapy for individuals and communities
Clara Mucci is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Chieti in Italy and a psychoanalyst in private practice. She is the author of several books including Beyond Individual and Collective Trauma and Borderline Bodies.
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The Race Conversation An Essential Guide to Creating Life-changing Dialogue Eugene Ellis “Comprehensive, insightful and empirical … This book is an important contribution to keeping the race conversation alive.” Dr. Isha Mckenzie-Mavinga, author of The Challenge of Racism in the Therapeutic Process
“When the history of therapy’s engagement with race and diversity comes to be written, Eugene Ellis will be one of the most important figures in the narrative … This work is ideal for any in-depth training, whether involving students or more experienced clinicians.”
March 2021 Paperback, £16.99 ISBN: 978-1-913494-26-1
Professor Andrew Samuels, former Chair, UK Council for Psychotherapy
The Relational Revolution in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Steven Kuchuck “Steven Kuchuck’s highly nuanced account offers as many questions as answers, and so stays true to the revolutionary project of replacing absolutist views of technique with recognition of the complexity that arises when we envision therapy as a meeting of minds, a co-creation in which the analyst is a full participant. This much-needed primer, sparkling with insight and wisdom, will be invaluable for readers within and outside the clinical field.” March 2021 Paperback, £12.99 ISBN: 978-1-913494-14-8
Dr. Jessica Benjamin, psychoanalyst and author of Beyond Doer and Done to and The Bonds of Love.
“Students and educators will want to incorporate this book into their thinking and practice for its directness, candor and scholarship.” Dr. Spyros D. Orfanos, Director, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis
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BOOKS
What is Normal? Edited by Jane Ryan and Roz Carroll IPaperback, ISBN: 9781913494209
Learning from the Unconscious
The Brain has a Mind of its Own
Edited by Christopher Arnold, Dale Bartle and Xavier Eloquin
Jeremy Holmes Paperback, ISBN: 9781913494025
Paperback, ISBN: 9781913494230
The Truth about Trauma and Dissociation
The New Sexual Landscape
Towards an Ecopsychotherapy
Valerie Sinason
Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco
Mary-Jayne Rust
Paperback, ISBN: 9781913494087
Pathologies of the Self Phil Mollon Paperback, ISBN: 9781913494001
Paperback, ISBN: 9781913494124
Paperback, ISBN: 9781913494186
Body Psychotherapy for the 21st Century
Dangerous Lunatics
Nick Totton
Paperback, ISBN: 9781913494063
Paperback, ISBN: 9781913494049
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Brett Kahr
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