ABSTRACT

Although Professor Kahr spends most of his week facilitating traditional psychoanalytical sessions with his patients, in his spare time he has had many professional adventures outside the consulting room, broadcasting as Resident Psychotherapist for the B.B.C., lecturing about the intimacies of couple psychodynamics on the stage of the Royal Opera House, and defending “Lady Macbeth” in a murder trial at the Royal Courts of Justice in conjunction with members of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

In this compellingly written and unputdownable book, Kahr shares his wealth of adventures both inside the consulting room and in the wider cultural sphere, disseminating psychoanalytical ideas more broadly. The book suggests that the “traditionalist” and the “maverick” aspects of the practising clinician can exist side by side in a fruitful collaboration. These adventures will encourage those embarking upon their first steps in the helping professions to entertain more creative ways of working.

chapter |13 pages

Prelude

Of mavericks and medias

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

On practising therapy at 1.45 a.m.

part I|75 pages

Consulting Room Essays

chapter Chapter One|13 pages

The handshake

chapter Chapter Two|12 pages

Tissues

chapter Chapter Three|9 pages

The ten-minute gap

chapter Chapter Four|8 pages

On painting the consulting room

chapter Chapter Five|9 pages

The bookshelf

chapter Chapter Seven|9 pages

On patients who remove their clothing in sessions

part II|66 pages

Media Essays

chapter Chapter Nine|8 pages

Filming sexual fantasies

chapter Chapter Ten|26 pages

How to make 120,000 people happy in just ten weeks

chapter Chapter Eleven|11 pages

A night at the opera: the Freudians at Covent Garden

chapter Chapter Twelve|10 pages

Defending “Lady Macbeth”: testimony of an expert witness

part III|20 pages

Historical Essays

chapter Chapter Thirteen|12 pages

Four unknown Freud anecdotes

part IV|20 pages

The Mind of the Psychotherapist

chapter Chapter Fifteen|13 pages

Musings of a musicophiliac

chapter Chapter Sixteen|5 pages

I suffer from Karnacitis

chapter |4 pages

Postlude

In camera and on camera, or, a maverick’s manifesto