Illusion, Disillusion, and Irony in Psychoanalysis

"This latest book of John Steiner is a rich collection of essays on themes that he has developed since his ground-breaking concepts of pathological organisations and psychic retreats. He has, in this book, enlarged on the emergence in the course of development, of an awareness of the loss of an ideal world. He draws on great clinical experience and wide and deep reading of literary sources, which makes his complex thinking, engaging, entertaining and a pleasure to read."

Ronald Britton FRCPsych, Distinguished Fellow British Psychoanalytical Society.

"The need to withdraw into a world of illusion, to create our own personal Garden of Eden is, Steiner shows us, ‘precisely what many of our patients do and the same is true of course for all of us since we are all patients and all have serious problems with reality.’

Nothing is both one thing and another in Steiner’s vision and this is best appreciated by those of us who are capable of embracing an ironic vision. It is irony that allows us simultaneously to empathize with our analysands and to observe them from our perspective as outsiders.

Steiner moves gracefully from Sophocles to Milton to Ibsen, Keats, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and many others. At each stop we find ourselves surprised and enlightened by the way he develops his theme in the context of works that are long familiar to us."

From the forward by Jay Greenberg, Training and Supervising Analyst, William Alanson White Institute; Editor, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly

"This latest book of John Steiner is a rich collection of essays on themes that he has developed since his ground-breaking concepts of pathological organisations and psychic retreats. He has, in this book, enlarged on the emergence in the course of development, of an awareness of the loss of an ideal world. He draws on great clinical experience and wide and deep reading of literary sources, which makes his complex thinking, engaging, entertaining and a pleasure to read."

Ronald Britton, Distinguished Fellow British Psychoanalytical Society

"The need to withdraw into a world of illusion, to create our own personal Garden of Eden is, Steiner shows us, ‘precisely what many of our patients do and the same is true of course for all of us since we are all patients and all have serious problems with reality.’ Nothing is simply Lineas in Steiner’s vision; everything is both one thing and another, best appreciated by those of us who are capable of embracing an ironic vision. It is irony that allows us simultaneously to empathise with our analysands and to observe them from our perspective as outsiders. Steiner moves gracefully from Sophocles to Milton to Ibsen, Keats, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and many others. At each stop we find ourselves surprised and enlightened by the way he develops his theme in the context of works that are long familiar to us."

Jay Greenberg, Training and Supervising Analyst, William Alanson White Institute; Editor, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly

"Arguably the core of this book is Steiner’s discussion of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, which is the subject of the first two chapters and is woven throughout many of the others. Its importance lies in its poetic rendering of what Steiner views as one of the fundamental psychological (recurrent) events of human life: the loss of an ideal state brought on through sometimes painful recognition of reality. One of the chief virtues of Steiner’s book is his illumination of some essential Kleinian motifs at the core of Milton’s text, which, in his discussion, renders them readily understandable to the uninitiated while also demonstrating their universality."

Neal Vorus is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst New York City who specializes in adults, adolescents, and children, and has been in private practice since 1998. To read this review in full, please see the following: Vorus, N. (2021) Illusion, disillusion, and irony in psychoanalysis, by John Steiner, London, England, Routledge, 2020, 180 pp, $39.95, 9780367467012. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 102:826-831