Alongside my clinical practice I’ve had a long career in academia, including nearly twenty years at NYU. My writing and teaching have mostly focused on breakdowns in communication — the causes, the consequences. My first book, The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork (Zone Books, 2012), was a historical and psychological investigation into our experiences of bureaucracy, especially when things go wrong (“a bright and sparkling study … provocative, original, and a very good read” — The New York Review of Books; “eccentric” – The New York Times). I’m currently working on a book for Random House about the many ways people drive each other crazy (gaslighting, mind games, double binds, passive aggression, etc.). There’s a conversation about the new project here.
Over the years I’ve also held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton; the Bauhaus-Universität 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. Three of my graduate students went on to academic careers, two became analysts.