The Soft Power of Culture

'Jonathan Sklar’s The Soft Power of Culture joins the perception of culture as soft with the truth of its personal and societal power. The book is a collection of gorgeous reflections on the coexistence – as reflected in art forms, play, and the radicality of free association – of life and death, cruelty and grace, conscious and unconscious experience, negation and affirmation, apocalypse and humanity. Sklar’s reflections on specific artists and their work as well as his own psychoanalytic clinical work are deeply interesting and embody the power of culture to document and transform human experience.'

-- Harriet Wolfe, MD, president, International Psychoanalytical Association

'The book is supremely relevant to our times. It imparts the inevitable presence of culture in the singular doings of psychoanalysis. It relates the inevitable presence of the Winnicottian heritage of transitional space and space for the reflection of W. R. Bion: what would the continent of the continent be? How to elude a time in which psychoanalysis melds with other scenarios of a culture in acute crisis? Jonathan Sklar does not intend to convince but rather to inspire movement in the reader’s spirit.

The theory of relativity taught us that the space between two bodies has existence, curves with gravity, conducts light and its black holes make spacetime disappear. Today, physics, the most hallowed science, addresses the mystery of what constitutes space. If we include human art, economy, and politics in our reflection, the challenge is even more startling. I would say that Sklar’s proposition is of inevitable urgency. It should be read, and this challenge addressed.'

-- Leopold Nosek, former president of FEPAL (Latin American Psychoanalytical Federation)

'Jonathan Sklar’s deep knowledge of psychoanalysis gained from a lifetime in the consulting room illuminates three separate but related areas: the considerable demands made on both protagonists in the analysis of very troubled patients, the belief that the joys offered by great artists can be furthered by psychoanalysis, and the conviction psychoanalysis offers an indispensable tool for understanding seemingly intractable sociopolitical realities. A book to savour.'

-- Lesley Caldwell, visiting professor, University College London

'This book is like going to an exhibition at a museum, where time must be spent in front of every painting to truly appreciate the beauty and richness of each work and to experience the emotions it elicits. Similarly, every chapter of this book will need time for reflection after reading to genuinely grasp the concepts presented and to appreciate the complexity and knowledge communicated in every page. Once again, as he did in his earlier collection of essays Dark Times, Jonathan Sklar challenges us to engage and to think deeply about the world around us. Psychoanalysts will find nuggets of deep psychoanalytic insights while also being challenged to examine a broader landscape outside the confines of the consulting room. But this is not just a book for psychoanalysts – it is an important work that invites the thoughtful reader into a richly imagined world where there is much to admire, to enjoy, and to comprehend.'

-- Edward Nersessian, clinical professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical Col