Sex, Drugs and Creativity

Dustin Kahoud is a clinical psychologist with specialized training in the treatment of addictions. He has received postgraduate training in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy as a candidate at the Derner Institute, where he also teaches classes on addictions to psychology graduate students. Dustin Kahoud continues to write about the omnipotent fantasies that drive human behavior, and he maintains a private practice in Great Neck, NY. Danielle Knafo is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. She is a professor at Long Island University and New York University. She has written and lectured extensively on the subjects of trauma, creativity, and sexuality. Her most recent book (with Routledge) is The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis and Culture.

• Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Lure of OmnipotencePART I: The Magical ImperativeChapter One: The Sexual Illusionist: Sleeping with a FantasyChapter Two: Elixirs of Immortality: Transformations of IntoxicationChapter Three: Mightier Than the Sword: The Magic of CreativityPART II: Messages in a Bottle: Literary and Clinical ApplicationsChapter Four: The Black Art of Anne SextonChapter Five: The Monsters and Magic of Stephen KingChapter Six: The Sorcerer Stoned: Quentin’s CaseConclusion: Omnipotent Fantasies for a Disenchanted World

Kahoud and Knafo explore the connection between sexuality, substance abuse, and creativity through a psychoanalytic lens, and they bring a fresh nuanced perspective that will inform psychodynamic practitioners as well as sophisticated readers. They elucidate the secret agendas behind sexuality and reach beyond behavior into a magical mystery tour of inner psychic experience. The case examples humanize the most extreme attempts to use sex as reparation for life’s universal harshness and inevitable losses. Suzanne Iasenza, Sex Therapist and Co-Editor, Lesbians, Feminism and Psychoanalysis The existentialists have proposed that the lot for us humans is one of infinite thirst juxtaposed to essential limitation. Kahoud and Knafo understand this well. They trace the vicissitudes of this aspect of our human nature to earliest phases of childhood development. The authors stress the importance of omnipotent fantasies and attitudes as defenses against a sense of impermanence and powerlessness. The book is well written and clear, free of obscuring jargon, and offers critically important psychodynamic understanding to explain how sex, drugs and creativity can become such a compelling force in the lives of susceptible individuals.Edward J. Khantzian, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Author, Treating Addiction as a Human ProcessThis book is a tour de force! With delicious writing, it explores the relationships among early trauma, existential dread, omnipotent fantasy, and sexuality, drugs, and creativity. The reader learns how omnipotent fantasy is expressed in perversion, addiction, and creativity and how particular responses to our existential dilemmas can transform self-defeating behavior into positive, creative activity. Kahoud and Knafo led me to reflect deeply on how these dynamics operate within me and are relevant to my work with patients. I highly recommend this book.Andrew Tatarsky, PhD; Author, Harm Reduction Psychotherapy: A New Treatment for Drug and Alcohol Problems