Alongside my clinical practice I’ve had a long career in academia, including nearly twenty years at NYU. I’ve spent a lot of this time thinking about breakdowns in communication — the causes, the consequences — in sessions and relationships, in the workplace and out in the world. I’m currently working on a book for Random House, tentatively titled The Gaslight Variations, about how people drive each other crazy (gaslighting, mind games, double binds, passive aggression, etc. — there’s a conversation about the new project here). I’m also the author of The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork (Zone Books), a historical and psychological investigation into our encounters with bureaucracy, especially when things go wrong. The New York Review of Books called it “a bright and sparkling study … provocative, original, and a very good read.” The New York Times called it “eccentric.”
Over the years I’ve held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton; the Bauhaus University in Weimar; the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; and the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. I helped build the Feminist Theory Archive at Brown and the Foundation for Community Psychoanalysis in Brooklyn. I’m a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and serve on its board of directors. I also serve on the advisory board for Parapraxis. Three of my graduate students went on to academic careers, two became analysts.