Originally trained as a historian, I started off my career interested in why the world is the way it is. Over time, as I retrained as a psychoanalyst, my interest shifted to why we are the ways we are. These days I write about both. 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 enthusiastically received in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Bookforum, and elsewhere—it even made it to the Supreme Court. I’ve also co-edited another book and published several dozen articles, essays, and reviews, a few of which can be found here, here, and here. I’m currently at work on a book about how other people drive us crazy, which came up in a conversation here. I’m represented by Alia Hanna Habib at The Gernert Company.
Over the years I’ve 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 also 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 graduate students went on to academic careers (Harvard, the New School, and UC Berkeley); two went on to train as psychoanalysts.