During the meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association next week, Nathan Szajnberg, Fred Sander and Arnold Richards will be signing copies of their new books on Friday, January 14th from Noon to 1 30 PM in the Astor Salon (3rd floor of the Waldorf Astoria).
Created in Our Own Images.com Both the book and the website ( www.createdinourownimages.com), revives W.S. Gilbert*s play Pygmalion and Galatea (1876), one of many adaptations of Ovid*s 1st-century A.D. myth. In this version Pygmalion has made numerous copies of his wife, Cynisca. One of them, Galatea, comes to life and falls in love with her creator.
Homo replicans: The play thus evokes cloning at the start of the 21st century, the roles of men and women in 19th-century Victorian England and the discovery of psychoanalysis in the 20th. Pygmalion, Cynisca and Galatea find themselves in an oedipal entanglement that must be resolved by the play*s end. The myth also evokes the eternal quest to create art.
Fred Sander has invited a number of writers for this interdisciplinary examination of this multi-leveled play. History, literature, the visual
arts, sciences, psychology, and ethics are all discussed. It is a liberal arts education between two covers.
About this book Norman Holland wrote:
This is an ingenious book. The authors have brought back to life W.S. Gilbert*s forgotten comedy of 1876, Pygmalion and Galatea, to bring out the way human cloning mimics the arts. Pygmalion clones his wife with farcical results. This drama tells of copying and is copying, for indeed all art is some kind of representation. But what happens to our biology in the age of cloning? Will we someday compose our offspring as artists compose their work? Will we order up geniuses, marathoners, or movie stars? What will my clone mean to me psychologically? The different writers in this book look at art and cloning from both scientific and aesthetic points of view with exciting results that any reader will find fascinating.
RELUCTANT WARRIORS by NATHAN SZAJNBERG Reluctant Warriors tells of elite citizen-soldiers in action. These soldiers speak of their inner lives, how they became such a select group of fighters, what it is like to face an enemy, including the ambivalence, hesitance, as well as certitude about protecting their families, most of whom live within kilometers of the battlefield that is Israel. All these men chose to leave active military service, but continued as officers in the reserves. The author, a psychoanalyst, interviewed these soldiers over the years of the Second Intifada and Lebanese War. Each one had some family member or friend killed. They speak and want to be heard. The real action for these men is their inner reactions: fears and hopes and memories that will not rest.
A searing account of the pre-army lives and army experiences of .. mostly kibbutz-raised Israeli soldiers, recounted with a tender love and a disciplined discernment that brings the reader to a distinctive combination of passionate identifications and objective understandings of the unique transformations from adolescence into a matured adulthood that marks the Israeli “experience.”
Robert S. Wallerstein, M.D.
Emeritus Professor, UCSF and former Chair of Psychiatry, UCSF.
Former President of the International Psychoanalytic Association.
THE JEWISH WORLD OF SIGMUND FREUD edited by ARNOLD RICHARDS
The Jewish World of Sigmund Freud, edited by Arnold Richards, is now available here. The Jewish World of Sigmund Freud is published by McFarland Press.
Though Freud is one of the towering figures of the twentieth century, too little attention has been paid to the influence of his Jewish identity upon his life and work, particularly the impact of growing up a Jew in turn-of-the-century Vienna. The 16 essays in this volume explore the particular imbeddedness of Freud and his followers in the cultural matrix of Jewish Central and Eastern Europe. Topics covered include general, sociological, historical, and cultural issues and then turn to the personal: Freud*s education, his Jewish identity, and his thoughts about Judaism.
Though a secular and ambivalent Jew, Freud*s emphasis on ellectualism and morality reveal the deep and abiding influence of European Jewish tradition upon his work.
SYLVIA BRODY’S BEGINNING TO GROW : FIVE LIVES will also be available for sale