Welcome to Confer Books! It is a delight to introduce you to yet more fascinating books on our growing list. In addition to Learning from the Unconscious, our first new Karnac Books title (see p.45), we have two new books for this season covering intergenerational trauma and relational psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. And keep an eye or an ear out for the buzz that we expect around The Race Conversation by Eugene Ellis, due out in March, a book that focusses on the non-verbal communication of race and emphasises resourcing, body awareness, mindfulness and healing. All our titles are available from the Karnac Bookshop www.karnacbooks.com
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CONFER BOOKS
SUBMISSIONS If you have a publishing idea you would like to develop please contact our Publishing Director, Christina Wipf Perry: christinawipfperry@confer.uk.com. Confer welcomes proposals from the full range of schools of thought, particularly those from emerging and marginal voices. Media Enquiries: booksmarketing@confer.uk.com Trade Sales Enquiries: David Wightman Global Book Sales Ltd, david@globalbooksales.co.uk
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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. Clara Mucci, Ph.D., is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Chieti in Italy and a psychoanalyst in private practice. She has written several books on Shakespeare and psychoanalysis, trauma, the Holocaust and personality disorders. She is the author of Beyond Individual and Collective Trauma (Routledge, 2013) and Borderline Bodies: Affect Regulation Therapy for Personality Disorders (W.W. Norton & Co., 2018)
2021 Paperback, 168 pages, ÂŁ12.99 ISBN: 978-1-913494-10-0
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The Relational Revolution in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Steven Kuchuck The relational revolution led to what is arguably the most radical revision of our understanding of how to effect healing and change in the mind since Freud’s groundbreaking work more than a century ago. In this concise yet comprehensive overview, Steven Kuchuck addresses core theories as well as newer, cutting edge trends within relational psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. This book defines postmodern relational concepts, and offers a clear, thoughtfully curated examination of relationality and its impact on psychoanalytic technique for both experienced clinicians and those newer to the field.
“A timely and elegant book. A primer, but more than that, an invitation to understand the workings and theory of relational therapy and psychoanalysis at a time when the issues of identity, attachment and the democratising of psychoanalysis are at the centre of concerns in the field. Relational psychoanalysis is a capacious discipline. It can accommodate the shockwaves in the world and the most intimate encounters between analyst and analysand and show how they are intertwined. Read it!” Dr Susie Orbach Psychoanalyst and author of Fat is a Feminist Issue, The Impossibility of Sex, and Bodies
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March 2021 Paperback, 208 pages, £12.99 ISBN: 978-1-913494-14-8
“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.” Jessica Benjamin Ph.D. author of Beyond Doer and Done to and The Bonds of Love
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CONFER BOOKS
The Race Conversation: An Essential Guide to Creating Life-changing Dialogue Eugene Ellis The Race Conversation explores how the damage and distress caused by racism lives not just in our minds, but principally in the body. As well as helping us to develop a cognitive understanding by exploring the history and development of the race construct, the book focuses specifically on the non-verbal communication of race, both as a means of social control and as an essential part of navigating oppressive patterns. This guide supports black, white, people of colour and mixed heritage people to emerge from the tight grip of race discomfort to a trauma-informed, neurophysiological approach that emphasises resourcing, body awareness, mindfulness and healing.
“With this book, Eugene Ellis confirms his standing as an exceptional theorist and a pioneering activist.The strength of his approach lies in its focus on the body: on how the race construct and its traumas are held in the bodies of people of colour and white people. Ellis’ idea of putting the race construct on the couch as a client is nothing short of brilliant. This work is ideal for any in-depth training, whether involving students or more experienced clinicians.”
March 2021 Paperback, 306 pages, £16.99 ISBN: 978-1-913494-26-1
Professor Andrew Samuels former Chair, UK Council for Psychotherapy
“In this insightful and accessible book, Eugene Ellis tackles a challenging topic with candor, honesty and courage. He manages to clarify the complexity of the race construct and its debilitating impact on our bodies, mental health, and relationships, while instilling hope for healing this legacy. Readers will find themselves inspired by knowledge and empowered by awareness so that enriching conversations about race become possible.” Pat Ogden, PhD Founder, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and author of The Pocket Guide to Sensorimotor Psychotherapy in Context
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What is Normal? Pychotherapists Explore the Question Edited by Jane Ryan and Roz Carroll Many people strive to be normal, and deviation from accepted norms can feel like failure. But why do we want to be normal? And what does that mean? Ordinary? Sane? Similar? With an extraordinary diversity of perspectives, the authors featured in this collection – all psychotherapists – use biographical accounts, political analyses and clinical vignettes to challenge the concept of normality. Through these stories and discussions, it emerges that our very uniqueness, oddness and differences as individuals are what make us fully human.
“This compilation of insightful, thoughtful, and highly original explorations gently subverts the concepts of normal as conventional and of what we often call ‘disease’ as abnormal. Written with sensitivity and compassion, it is a challenging and much-needed contribution to the psychotherapeutic literature.”
November 2020 Paperback, 192 pages, £19.99 ISBN: 978-1-91349-4209
Gabor Maté, M.D. Author of When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress
The Truth about Trauma and Dissociation Everything You Didn’t Want to Know and Were Afraid to Ask Valerie Sinason
October 2020 Paperback, £12.99 ISBN: 9781913494087
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An accessible and sensitive guide to the key concepts involved when working with people who have experienced trauma and dissociation, this book covers all degrees of trauma: complex, childhood attachment ruptures, sexual abuse, torture, war, and even the coronavirus pandemic. Through this compassionate and intelligent work, Valerie Sinason shows us what is needed to understand some of the worst possible experiences without a loss of feelings.
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The Brain has a Mind of its Own
Dangerous Lunatics
Jeremy Holmes
Brett Kahr
ISBN: 978-1-913494-02-5 Paperback, 208 pages, £12.99
ISBN: 978-1-913494-06-3 Paperback, 216 pages, £12.99
Body Psychotherapy for the 21st Century
Towards an Ecopsychotherapy
Attachment, Neurobiology and the New Science of Psychotherapy
Trauma, Criminality, and Forensic Psychotherapy
Nick Totton
Mary-Jayne Rust
ISBN: 978-1-913494-04-9 Paperback, 168 pages, £12.99
ISBN: 978-1-913494-12-4 Paperback, 160 pages, £12.99
The New Sexual Landscape and Contemporary Psychoanalysis
Exploring Narcissistic and Borderline States of Mind
Pathologies of the Self
Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco
Phil Mollon
ISBN: 978-1-913494-18-6 Paperback, 216 pages, £12.99
ISBN: 978-1-913494-00-1 Paperback, 176 pages, £12.99
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Confer takes great delight in having expanded its services to include both publishing and bookselling. In addition to being the moniker for our bookshop, currently online, but soon to have a new location in central London, Karnac Books is also a sister imprint of Confer Books. While Confer Books will continue to publish texts about psychotherapy aimed at both the profession and the increasingly curious general reader, Karnac Books – as befits its lineage – will publish books for professionals who work actively in the psychological field. We hope that you will enjoy our growing list of titles, many of which have developed out of Confer’s popular events on a range of psychological topics, and all of which embrace Confer’s values of inclusivity and creativity within the field of psychotherapy and related branches of mental health.
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Learning from the Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Approaches in Educational Psychology Edited by Christopher Arnold, Dale Bartle and Xavier Eloquin Each of us has an inner world, influenced by experience, environment and the people and places we encounter. As individuals engaged with children and those around them, educational psychologists enter a multitude of systems and relationships with the intention of helping. This often involves working in a context of confusion, conflict and creativity, a dynamic tension which is reflected in the chapters of this book. Designed to give both students and practitioners access to the experience of engaging with a dynamic unconscious, this volume investigates some of the key tenets and principles of psychoanalytic theory and demonstrates ways in which educational psychologists have used both theory and practice in their roles. Each chapter approaches a recognisable activity from educational psychology practice and provides an account of how psychoanalytic theories about our unique inner worlds and our unconscious processes can inform and enrich these interactions.
“This is a great book and an enjoyable read which I would recommend for all educational psychologists ... chapters discuss a wide range of practical applications of psychoanalytic theory; with individual children and young people as well as considering school leaders, groups of school staff and work which has its focus upon whole organisations and their structures. There is much to be learnt, or reminded of, from reading this book.” Dr Cate Mullen, West Sussex Educational Psychology Service
February 2021 Paperback, 360 pages, £32.99 ISBN: 9781913494230
“The contributions in this volume impressively demonstrate that psychoanalytic concepts are very well suited to understanding the particular problems of children, their families, professionals and institutions in the field of education ... a great asset for all those who are looking for a compass for orientation in the world of education.” Prof. Dr. Christoph Steinebach is President of the European Federation of Psychological Associations and faculty member at the School for Applied Psychology, ZHAW, Switzerland
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