Lacan on Depression and Melancholia -Derek Hook, Stijn Vanheule -Interviewed by Leon Brenner

Derek Hook, Stijn Vanheule are Interviewed by Leon Brenner on their new book 'Lacan on Depression and Melancholia' Depression, mourning and melancholia in clinical settings. Hook and Vanheule’s edited collection links conceptual rigor in terms of Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalytic thought with contemporary clinical reality, addressing the failure of a culture that biologizes human suffering and is over-reliant on psychopharmacological and behavior-based methods of treatment. Contributors to this volume think through both psychoanalytic history and our current moment, which itself is historicized, addressing the deterioration of speech and conversation, while enlarging and elaborating important clinical concepts and applications. In so doing, this book creates a social bond between clinicians, scholars, laypeople and those who engage in treatment, providing a cultural critique of the failure of identificatory bonds in a society hell bent on identity as a solution to existence. Melancholia is no longer restricted to "an illness" to cure, but a potential mode of subjective response recalling death to a ferocious social demand for limitless productivity and connectivity." - Manya Steinkoler and Vanessa Sinclair, Psychoanalysts "Today’s predominant socio-medical discourse aims to reduce intrapsychic conflict and suffering into an orderly diagnostic list of Disorders. Vague catch-all terms like depression lure in those craving the latest evidence-based quick-fix. This book, comprising papers by eminent Lacanian thinkers, promises no quick-fixes. Instead, it questions and critiques this discourse, reminding us that subjective complexity cannot be wished away by statistic conformity to some imaginary conflict-free Order. Highly recommended." - Christos Tombras, Supervising Psychoanalyst, London, "In our contemporary world, depression is a substantial clinical problem. Yet, its conceptualization is vague, which is a crucial part of the problem. In this volume Hook and Vanheule collect papers that provide a refreshing Lacanian reading of depressive suffering, discussing how it takes shape in psychosis and neurosis, and how it reflects a specific position towards speaking, transference and the drive." - Paul Verhaeghe, Psychoanalyst