Ian Parker is a psychoanalyst in Manchester, UK, Honorary Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, Secretary of Manchester Psychoanalytic Matrix, and President of the College of Psychoanalysts, UK.

• Introduction: Psychoanalysis is not what you think1 Science: Avoiding analysis of the mind2 Sex: Avoiding analysis of the body3 Schisms: Avoiding analytic politics4 Teaching: Avoiding analytic practice5 Society: Engaging with the British Tradition6 Conversations: Taking care of health7 Therapy: Closer encounters 8 Research: Studying and experiencing9 Training: In Group Analysis10 Personal: Training analysis11 Diagnosis: Clinical structures12 Supervision: Confession and confidentiality13 Enlightenment: Second nature in Brazil14 Trauma: Truth and reconciliation15 Theory: Žižek, culture and the clinic16 Identification: Laibach and the state17 Japan: A limit case for analysis18 Queer: From Russia with love19 Islam: Faith in Freud20 Transference: Ethics in actionAcknowledgementsBibliographyIndex

"Professor Ian Parker, a significant intellectual, has much to teach us. This remarkably frank memoir – captivatingly written – will provide a very helpful insight into so many aspects of psychoanalysis – both its attractions and, even, its occasional repulsions." --Professor Brett Kahr, Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, London"Ian Parker’s wide-ranging discussion of psychoanalysis in international contexts is dazzling in approach, tonality, and themes and presents readers with a history of the problems of response and change. Parker gives us a new approach to the psychoanalytic field through his longstanding development and this is a major contribution." –Professor Deborah Britzman, FRSC, York University, Canada"From his student years, Ian Parker began searching for alternatives to the shortcomings of mainstream psychology, and this book is the riveting story of how he grappled with the complex diversities of psychoanalytic thought, eventually becoming a Lacanian analyst himself. Parker’s erudite and pellucid prose makes this essential reading for anyone pondering the persisting potential and possible pitfalls of deploying psychoanalytic narratives, especially in political contexts, as he takes us on rollicking journeys through Brazil, Korea, Russia and Japan, while debating with queer theory, Judaism and Islam along the way." --Professor Lynne Segal, Birkbeck, author, Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy