Description
Book SynopsisChristopher Bollas presents us with a new literary form in his Conversations: twenty-three unique dialogues to captivate, amuse, and inspire.
The psychoanalyst Paula Heimann asked: ‘Who is speaking? To whom? About what? And why now?’ We speak with the voice and position of many others – mothers, fathers, siblings, teachers – and ordinary conversation therefore stages the history of our interpersonal engagements. Heimann’s questions also apply when we talk to ourselves, and our inner dialogues reveal the hidden genius of our private world in which we are both actor and audience, poet and reader, politician and electorate. It's quite a ride, and an art form all of its own.
Trade ReviewChristopher Bollas brings a psychoanalytic and absurdist mind to ordinary conversations, lifting them into a form akin to theatre. Funny, larky, and existential, Bollas turns the private inside out and these exchanges voice the surprising, yet recognisable, inner feelings of our contemporary moment.
-- Mona Simpson
Bollas invites the fascinating possibility that psychoanalysis is akin to poetic conjecture
Why am I here
What are we doing in this room together
I don’t know I don’t know
Could it be
Why me
Mama
Papa
This funny sad book wanders through the everyday and reflects on the nothingness of being
Disappearing down the drains - the uncanny fear of the loss of self. Terror
Why me
Why me
-- Anish Kapoor
Table of ContentsContents
Brand new
Can I help you?
It feels good
Customer relations
Shopping
Memories are made of this
On board
Reading
Looking through the window
The overall situation
What is happening?
Do I look stupid?
Along came a spider
The man with no worries
What is it?
Cyberspace
On the same page
Self with other
Should we enter?
The delay
A thought searching for a thinker
Being and nothingness
So I went down to shop
Afternote
