Before joining the clinical faculty at the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center I spent almost two decades as a professor of the history and theory of communication at NYU. I was mostly interested in situations where communication breaks down. My first book, The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork (Zone Books, 2012; French translation, 2013), was an investigation into our experiences of bureaucracy, especially when things go wrong. The book was well reviewed by The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Bookforum, and elsewhere. I’ve also published several dozen articles, essays, and reviews, a few of which can be found here, here, and here. I’m currently working on a book about “gaslighting” and some of the other ways people drive each other crazy, which has come up in conversations here and here. I’m represented by Alia Hanna Habib at The Gernert Company.
Over the years I’ve also been a Fulbright scholar; a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton; and a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities, where I serve on the board of directors. I helped build the Feminist Theory Archive at Brown and the Foundation for Community Psychoanalysis in Brooklyn. Three of my Ph.D. students at NYU went on to academic careers (Harvard, the New School, and UC Berkeley); two went on to train as psychoanalysts.