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A Psychoanalytic Odyssey: Painted Guinea Pigs, Dreams, and Other Realities

Author(s) : Eugene J. Mahon

Reviews and Endorsements

‘Eugene Mahon is immersed in the world of childhood and he is also immersed in the world of Shakespeare, as was Sigmund Freud. His unique combination of psychoanalytic insight, poetry, and playfulness is rare to find and provides a powerful platform for the fascinating clinical chapters of this book. To read him is both a pleasure and a moral enlightenment. I cannot recommend this book too highly, both for beginners as an enticement into the analytic world and for the experienced as a pause for reflection.’
— Sheldon Bach, author of The How-To Book for Students of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

‘This is a brilliant book. Eugene Mahon is a psychoanalyst, and the book is about psychoanalysis, but he is also much more – a poet, a Shakespeare scholar, and a gifted writer. These are all apparent as he invites us to join him on a series of psychoanalytic journeys. He illustrates the basic concepts of psychoanalysis by way of vivid accounts, free of jargon, that capture the human transactions that are the core of the psychoanalytic experience. Transference, dreams, play, screen memories, and other subjects all become alive, and most of all, we come to know the inner experience of a gifted psychoanalyst, and to share his thrill of discovery.’
— Robert Michels, MD, Walsh McDermott University Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry, Cornell University; Training and Supervising Analyst, Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research; Former Joint Editor-in-Chief, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis

‘In this eminently readable work, Eugene Mahon brings classical psychoanalytic inquiry to life with a richness of evocative clinical reports marked by their vivid vitality and depth. Basic concepts are made new again, sensitively extended with incisive freshness as Mahon illustrates the subtle and mischievous deceptions by which desire and expression are ever disguised – whether in play, in dreams, in symptoms, in character, or evocatively in transference. Mahon, a guide of rare erudition, writes with ease and clarity, keeping the reader as a companion as he traces his engaging odyssey of psychoanalytic investigation.’
— Warren S. Poland, MD, former editor of the JAPA Review of Books; recipient of the 2009 Sigourney Award; and author of Melting the Darkness

‘Gently, but persuasively, Eugene Mahon takes us on an expedition of the psychic terrain that lies between reality and fantasy, between knowledge and experience, and between language and action. He offers us fresh conceptualizations of mourning, repression, transference, screen memory, insight, and, above all, play in its myriad expressive and therapeutic functions. We are informed and enriched.’
— Salman Akhtar, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College; Training and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia