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On Psychoanalytic Writing (and Writing Psychoanalysis) as Migratory Action and Postcolonial Revolt: A Response to Alexander Stein

Alexander Stein’s essay, a provocative and performative appeal to psychoanalysts, challenges us to move beyond both our jargon-filled literature and our self-abnegating professional stance by intervening in the public realm, especially through writing. I share Stein’s appeal but also suggest that, actually, many psychoanalysts have already taken up his call, and that we are witnessing a renaissance of the public psychoanalytic essay, along with the birth of psychoanalytic podcasting. Further, beyond the solutions-focused genre of psychoanalytic writing that Stein specifically advocates, I suggest that we cultivate both scholarly and eccentric writing which aims to dislocate, by speaking not only from the mantle of power and authorized leaders but from the margins. Only then will we truly perform psychoanalysis as Freud’s plague—i.e., the “disruptive innovation” it is. Such performative interventions are urgently needed in a world reeling from its own destructive creations. These may have the added benefit of resuscitating the public perception of our field as discredited, and our own flagging and too long dispirited professional self-esteem.