Class and Psychoanalysis Landscapes of Inequality

Class and Psychoanalysis is a text of great importance. Joanna Ryan writes in a clear and objective way about the neglect of social class in psychoanalysis, yet behind this objectivity is a passionate involvement that will strike a chord with all concerned psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. The book presents the best available overview of the history, theory and practice of psychoanalysis in relation to social class, combining this with interview material from the author's own studies of psychotherapists to give a detailed and compelling picture of how class enters the consulting room. Engaging with this profound yet accessible book is essential for all who care about class injuries and how we might find ways to respond to them.

Stephen Frosh, Professor of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London

The challenges posed by all kinds of diversity must surely be at the top of the psychoanalytic agenda. In this excellent book Joanna Ryan ensures that the question of social class is taken seriously in our theoretical and clinical formulations so that we can work towards a truly class inclusive psychoanalytic practice.

Professor Alessandra Lemma, professor of Psychological Therapies, Tavistock Clinic and Essex University and Visiting Professor, Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London.

Joanna Ryan vibrantly gives voice to the ways that class is lived, talked about, not talked about, and too often anxiously disavowed as a crucial, persisting part of identity in cultures of class inequality. Through interviews with therapists about their class experience in and outside the clinic, through historical research on how class has sometimes entered, sometimes disappeared from psychoanalytic theory and practice, Ryan offers a thoroughgoing meditation on class and psychoanalysis that, in this reader's opinion, ought to have an immediate, radicalizing impact on psychoanalytic training and practice.

Lynne Layton, Ph.D., Psychoanalyst, Harvard Medical School; Co-editor, Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society