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The Enigma of Desire: Sex, Longing, and Belonging in Psychoanalysis, Galit Atlas, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, London, 2015
Reviewed by Jyoti Swaminathan
Dr. Galit Atlas' Enigma of Desire will resonate with readers as she draws them into a labyrinthine journey that engages a psychoanalyst and her patients on a course in self discovery. In her book, the anguish of unfulfilled desire finds itself on center stage, looking for resolution. Selecting specific tales, the analyst retells stories that contain her former patients' attempts at intimacy, initially through the expression of sexuality and eventually through relationships. We are reminded of the power of early attachments between mother and child: their life long course and far reaching consequences.
The title is evocative and is taken from a painting by Salvador Dali, "The Enigma of Desire", which he also subtitled "My Mother, My Mother, My Mother." The themes of maternal longing, family secrets and ghosts not only anchor Dali's art but also present themselves in the lives of her patients (Atlas, 2016, p.2). For example, she writes,
...my investigation of the enigma of desire is held in the intersubjective space between analyst and patient as a bidirectional process between two people with two different psychological systems. I explore levels of communication and the ways we listen to them in treatment, and dive into the nuances of a "dyad is dialogue" (Beebe & Lachmann, 2013), touch layers of experience and existence, and challenge the hierarchal order that psychoanalysis lies within. (Atlas, 2016, p.4)
What makes her perspective interesting is that Dr. Atlas defines the context of the mother-child relationship as intersubjective rather than hierar- chical in nature; she shapes the analytic experience as a co-construction between analyst and patient. Atlas challenges the practice of therapy stating that the mother-infant relationship is more than one of 'nurturing and sensuality' (Atlas, 2016, p.2). In observing the relationship between analyst and patient, Dr. Atlas notes that the therapist, in the role of the 'nurturing mother,' avoids or denies the struggle and unspoken presence of 'threatening sexual feelings", leaving the enigmatic in the shadows (Atlas, 2016, p.2). In approaching the analysis as a co-constructed, dialectical process, the patients' sexual experiences are understood within the analytic engagement. One wonders if Atlas will explore...