How to Be Intimate with 15,000,000 Strangers

Professor Brett Kahr has worked in the mental health field for over forty years. He is Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology in London and Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis and Mental Health at Regent’s University London. A trained historian, Kahr is also both an Honorary Fellow as well as the Honorary Director of Research at the Freud Museum London. He is the author of seventeen books and series editor of over seventy-five additional titles. A Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University, he is also Consultant Psychotherapist at The Balint Consultancy. He works with individuals and couples in Central London.

'This is a rare and special treat ... a gem of a read. Professor Brett Kahr combines his scintillating Freudian intellect with his forty years of experience, in radio and television, to put media itself on the couch, revealing a whole gamut of captivating insights. An absolute delight!'Dan Chambers, Creative Director and Co-Founder of Blink Films (one of Real Screen 100’s Top 5 Non-Scripted U.K. Indies) and former Director of Programmes, Channel Five Television, UK'Brett Kahr invites us on his extraordinary journey of popularising psychoanalysis through the media. Writing with clarity, humour, empathy, and great warmth about his long experience as the United Kingdom’s foremost media psychoanalyst, he details his adventures on television and radio as well as sharing wide-ranging reflections about celebrity culture and the history of mediated psychoanalysis. Kahr thereby contributes enormously to dissolving the secretive aura of psychoanalysis while being deeply respectful to the boundaries of a private profession. At a time where psychoanalysis through popular culture is more needed than ever, this book is essential reading for clinicians, academics, and anyone concerned about the shared future of humanity and psychoanalysis.'Professor Jacob Johanssen, Associate Professor in Communications, St. Mary’s University, and author of Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere and co-author of Media and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Introduction'No one has done more to lead psychoanalysis out of the closet and into the hearts and minds of 15,000,000 – and counting – than the brilliant Professor Brett Kahr. Readers are in for a treat, because he does so in beautiful, accessible language, never compromising theoretical or ethical rigor; a rare, impressive feat.'Dr. Steven Kuchuck, Immediate Past President of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, and Faculty, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and the National Institute for the Psychotherapies'How to Be Intimate with 15,000,000 Strangers: Musings on Media Psychoanalysis makes a unique contribution to clinical media psychology. Professor Brett Kahr has devoted his career to the dissemination of complex psychoanalytical concepts among the general public. In this book, he uses creative and courageous means to demystify, destigmatise, and demarginalize psychoanalysis through his collaborations with the media. Entertaining and educational, this work inspires psychotherapists and psychoanalysts to venture beyond the consulting room and to provide public outreach.'Professor Caroline Sehon, Director of the International Psychotherapy Institute, and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical School, as well as Executive Committee Board Member and Chair of the Committee on Community Psychoanalysis of the American Psychoanalytic Association'As Radio 2’s Resident Psychotherapist, Professor Brett Kahr was one of the first brave pioneers who championed mental health on the BBC’s airways, thus fulfilling the BBC’s remit to "inform, educate and entertain". His insights have paved the way to destigmatising mental illness and have forever changed the landscape of media psychoanalysis.'Jenny Slater, Music Project Manager, European Broadcasting Union, BBC Radio, UK

• Prologue: How to Publicise Psychoanalysis Section I: Introduction to Media Psychoanalysis 1. The Bulimic Lorry Driver: Championing the Media in Spite of Hesitancy and Envy Section II: Media Psychoanalysis in Action 2. "You have five minutes to cure the nation": My Years at the B.B.C. 3. How to Dramatise 13,553 Sexual Fantasies in Only Forty-Seven Minutes 4. Making Slough Happy: A Television Experiment 5. On Stage at the Royal Opera House Section III: Television in the Consulting Room 6. Television as Rorschach: The Unconscious Use of the Cathode Nipple 7. Dr. Paul Weston and the Blood-Stained Couch: Some Critical Comments on In TreatmentSection IV: Celebrity and the Psyche 8. Fame and the Unconscious: Toxic and Inspiring Aspects of Celebrity Culture 9. On Not Being Shakespeare, Mozart, or Picasso: Creativity, Bereavement, and the Wish to Be Famous Section V: Uneasy Bedfellows: Freud and His Progeny Confront the Media 10. Media Monasticism and Media Whoredom: The Uncomfortable Marriage Between Psychoanalysis and Popular Exposure 11. "I think analysts are not very good as broadcasters": Donald Winnicott's Contribution to Media Psychology 12. Conclusion: The Future of Media Psychoanalysis