How to Be Intimate with 15,000,000 Strangers

How to Be Intimate with 15,000,000 Strangers is an investigation into how the fields of mental health and media can work together more collaboratively. Drawing upon his extensive experience in media psychoanalysis, Brett Kahr explores how a rich collaboration with radio, television, film, and other forms of public outreach can be accomplished while also embracing the weight and gravitas of depth psychology. In addition to describing his work as Resident Psychotherapist at the B.B.C., Kahr also examines the ways in which references to the media enter the consulting room and provide clinicians with important insights about hidden aspects of the minds of their patients. Moreover, he investigates the historical hesitancy of psychoanalysts - experts in confidentiality - to engage with such a public arena as the media, thus providing important insights about how one can collaborate broadly and loudly while also maintaining one's ethical commitment to silence and privacy. This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and anyone intrigued by the intersection between media and psychoanalysis.

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.

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