Current Psychoanalytics

Two hosts discuss the key points of Pornocracy, a paper by Mark Kinet in the Dutch ⁠⁠Journal of Psychoanalysis⁠⁠. Pornography is usually discussed in terms of addiction, morality, or sexual liberation. Psychoanalysis asks a different question: What psychological function does pornography serve?Drawing on Freud, Winnicott, Lacan, Michael Bader, Kernberg, and Joyce McDougall, Mark Kinet explores a paradox that challenges many common assumptions. What if pornography is not primarily about unrestrained desire, but about regulating anxiety, guilt, and concern? What if sexual fantasy is less an escape from morality than an attempt to make desire feel psychologically safe?This episode examines pornography as a carefully constructed fantasy world in which sexuality is detached from vulnerability, intimacy, and emotional responsibility. Rather than reducing women to objects out of indifference, some fantasies may function precisely to neutralise excessive concern for the other, allowing sexual excitement to emerge without overwhelming guilt. Sexual preferences are approached not as fixed identities but as personal psychological inventions—creative solutions through which unconscious conflicts, desires, fears, and longings become organised. This episode invites listeners to look beyond the visible content of pornography toward the invisible psychological dramas it conceals. As in dreams, the manifest image tells only part of the story. The real question is not what arouses us, but why this particular fantasy became necessary for this particular person.For the paper in the Dutch Journal of Psychoanalysis: PornocratieVisit ⁠Mark Kinet ⁠for books, articles, and further resources.Current Psychoanalysis brings together more than 35 books and other writings by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Mark Kinet. Each episode explores how unconscious meaning, personal history, and the therapeutic relationship illuminate psychiatry, psychotherapy, and culture. Two virtual hosts discuss carefully selected texts, translating complex psychoanalytic ideas into clear, engaging conversations while remaining remarkably faithful to the original work. For clinicians, students, and anyone curious about the human mind. 

Two virtual hosts discuss the key points of Unnatural Love, a paper by Mark Kinet in the Dutch Journal of Psychoanalysis. He argues that psychoanalysis sees perversion not simply as a sexual deviation but as a complex way of coping with innerconflict. Freud viewed it as an expression of the child's early sexuality and as a defence against deep-seated fears of loss and vulnerability. Klein linked it to primitive anxieties and aggression, while Lacan understood it as a way ofresisting the limits and rules that make social life possible. Stollerdescribed perversion as an attempt to turn the pain of childhood trauma into asense of power and control. More recent thinkers, such as McDougall—who speaksof a self-protective form of sexuality—and Benvenuto, who highlights the lossof mutuality and genuine encounter, have further expanded this psychoanalytic perspective. Ultimately, Kinet suggests that perversion sheds light on universal human struggles with love, desire, control, and vulnerability.For the paper in the Dutch Journal of Psychoanalysis: Onnatuurlijke Liefde Visit ⁠Mark Kinet ⁠for books, articles, and further resources.Current Psychoanalysis brings together more than 35 books and other writings by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Mark Kinet. Each episode explores how unconscious meaning, personal history, and the therapeutic relationship illuminate psychiatry, psychotherapy, and culture. Two virtual hosts discuss carefully selected texts, translating complex psychoanalytic ideas into clear, engaging conversations while remaining remarkably faithful to the original work. For clinicians, students, and anyone curious about the human mind.

Mark Solms is widely regarded as one of the leading figures in contemporary psychoanalysis and neuroscience. He is the editor of Freud’s New Standard Edition and he has played a major role in restoring psychoanalysis to scientific standing. His latest book bears a characteristically ambitious title: The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing. Drawing on Mark Kinet’s critical review, two virtual hosts explore the strengths and limitations of Solms’ neuropsychoanalytic vision of psychoanalysis. The stakes are high, although—paraphrasing Freud—every advance may ultimately prove to be only half as great as it first appears.For the review, visit Freud after Freud. Review of Mark Solms' The Only CureFor more information, visit: www.markkinet.beCurrent Psychoanalysis brings together more than 35 books and other writings by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Mark Kinet. Each episode explores how unconscious meaning, personal history, and the therapeutic relationship illuminate psychiatry, psychotherapy, and culture. Two virtual hosts discuss carefully selected texts, translating complex psychoanalytic ideas into clear, engaging conversations while remaining remarkably faithful to the original work. For clinicians, students, and anyone curious about the human mind.

Some children learn too early how to care for others—and too late how to care for themselves.Based on Mark Kinet's The Psychodynamics and Psychogenesis of Parentification, this conversation explores the hidden costs of growing up with responsibilities that belong to adults. The works of Sigmund Freud, Sandor Ferenczi, Michael Balint, Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, Wilfred Bion and Jacques Lacan are integrated in systemic thinking and contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives derived from attachment theory, infant research, and neuropsychoanalysis. Two virtual hosts discuss role reversal, emotional parentification, family dynamics, resilience, and vulnerability, showing how childhood experiences can continue to shape adult relationships and psychological well-being.An accessible introduction to one of the most significant yet under-recognised themes in contemporary psychotherapy.Read the book: The Psychodynamics and Psychogenesis of Parentification - 1st EditionVisit ⁠Mark Kinet ⁠for books, articles, and further resources.Current Psychoanalysis brings together more than 35 books and other writings by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Mark Kinet. Each episode explores how unconscious meaning, personal history, and the therapeutic relationship illuminate psychiatry, psychotherapy, and culture. Two virtual hosts discuss carefully selected texts, translating complex psychoanalytic ideas into clear, engaging conversations while remaining remarkably faithful to the original work. For clinicians, students, and anyone curious about the human mind.

Why is therapy not a car wash?Based on Mark Kinet's Patient Testimonies of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Reported and Recorded, this virtual conversation explores what psychotherapy looks like through the eyes of those who have actually undergone it. The book begins and ends with a survey of psychoanalytic principles that organise clinical practice. Then we hear the patients' stories in their own 2500 words. Drawing on 38 patient testimonies, two virtual hosts discuss therapeutic change, emotional insight, human connection, and the complex process through which people come to understand themselves differently.A unique exploration of psychotherapy from the patient's perspective—where outcomes are measured not only in symptoms reduced, but also in lives transformed.Read the book: Patient Testimonies of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. Reported and RecordedVisit ⁠Mark Kinet ⁠for books, articles, and further resources.Current Psychoanalysis brings together more than 35 books and other writings by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Mark Kinet. Each episode explores how unconscious meaning, personal history, and the therapeutic relationship illuminate psychiatry, psychotherapy, and culture. Two virtual hosts discuss carefully selected texts, translating complex psychoanalytic ideas into clear, engaging conversations while remaining remarkably faithful to the original work. For clinicians, students, and anyone curious about the human mind.

What does psychoanalytic psychotherapy actually look like in everyday psychiatric practice?Drawing on Mark Kinet's Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in Psychiatric Practice: Premises and Clinical Portraits, this episode first sketches seven psychoanalytic principles that organise Kinet's clinical work. Then, 77 patients are portrayed, showing naturalistic problems and therapeutic process as they manifest themselves in real-life psychiatric practice. Two virtual hosts examine the therapeutic relationship, transference, resistance, interpretation, and the subtle processes through which psychological change becomes possible.Combining clinical insight with practical experience, this episode offers a rich introduction to contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy and its place within modern psychiatry.Ideal for psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychologists, trainees, and anyone interested in the human encounter at the heart of therapy.Read the book: Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in Psychiatric Practice. Premises and Clinical PortraitsVisit ⁠Mark Kinet ⁠for books, articles, and further resources.Current Psychoanalysis brings together more than 35 books and other writings by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Mark Kinet. Each episode explores how unconscious meaning, personal history, and the therapeutic relationship illuminate psychiatry, psychotherapy, and culture. Two virtual hosts discuss carefully selected texts, translating complex psychoanalytic ideas into clear, engaging conversations while remaining remarkably faithful to the original work. For clinicians, students, and anyone curious about the human mind.

Can psychiatry benefit from psychoanalytic thinking without abandoning scientific rigour?Drawing on Mark Kinet's Psychoanalytic Principles in Psychiatric Practice: A Remedy by Truth, this lively conversation between two virtual hosts introduces themes such as unconscious meaning, therapeutic listening, transference, subjectivity, diagnosis, and the place of truth in mental health treatment. The works of Sigmund Freud, Sandor Ferenczi, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Donald Winnicott, Jacques Lacan, attachment theory, infant research and neuropsychoanalysis are thereby integrated. Rather than opposing psychiatry and psychoanalysis, this episode examines how both perspectives can enrich one another in everyday clinical practice.Ideal for psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychologists, trainees, and anyone interested in a more humane and reflective approach to mental suffering.Read the book: Psychoanalytic Principles in Psychiatric Practice. A Remedy by TruthVisit ⁠Mark Kinet ⁠for books, articles, and further resources.Current Psychoanalysis brings together more than 35 books and other writings by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Mark Kinet. Each episode explores how unconscious meaning, personal history, and the therapeutic relationship illuminate psychiatry, psychotherapy, and culture. Two virtual hosts discuss carefully selected texts, translating complex psychoanalytic ideas into clear, engaging conversations while remaining remarkably faithful to the original work. For clinicians, students, and anyone curious about the human mind.

Can neuroscience help us understand what Freud meant by the drive?Drawing on Mark Kinet's The Spirit of the Drive in Neuropsychoanalysis, this lively discussion between two virtual hosts introduces listeners to topics such as affective consciousness, SEEKING, motivation, desire, and the future of psychoanalytic thinking. Key authors include Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Wilfred Bion, Jaak Panksepp, Karl Friston, Mark Solms and Ariane Bazan. Whether you are a clinician, researcher, student, or simply curious about the human mind, this episode provides an accessible gateway into one of the most exciting developments in contemporary psychoanalysis.Read the book (the first in Routledge's Neuropsychoanalysis Series)The Spirit of the Drive in NeuropsychoanalysisVisit Mark Kinet for books, articles, and further resources.Current Psychoanalysis brings together more than 35 books and other writings by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Mark Kinet. Each episode explores how unconscious meaning, personal history, and the therapeutic relationship illuminate psychiatry, psychotherapy, and culture. Two virtual hosts discuss carefully selected texts, translating complex psychoanalytic ideas into clear, engaging conversations while remaining remarkably faithful to the original work. For clinicians, students, and anyone curious about the human mind.