{"product_id":"on-the-couch-nathan-kravis-9780262036610","title":"On the Couch: A Repressed History of the Analytic Couch from Plato to Freud","description":"\u003cb\u003eHow the couch became an icon of self-knowledge and self-reflection as well as a site for pleasure, transgression, and healing.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe peculiar arrangement of the psychoanalyst's office for an analytic session seems inexplicable. The analyst sits in a chair out of sight while the patient lies on a couch facing away. It has been this way since Freud, although, as Nathan Kravis points out in \u003ci\u003eOn the Couch\u003c\/i\u003e, this practice is grounded more in the cultural history of reclining posture than in empirical research. Kravis, himself a practicing psychoanalyst, shows that the tradition of recumbent speech wasn't dreamed up by Freud but can be traced back to ancient Greece, where guests reclined on couches at the \u003ci\u003esymposion\u003c\/i\u003e (a gathering for upper-class males to discuss philosophy and drink wine), and to the Roman \u003ci\u003econvivium\u003c\/i\u003e (a banquet at which men and women reclined together). From bed to bench to settee to chaise-longue to sofa: Kravis tells how the couch became an icon of self-knowledge and self-reflection as well as a site for pleasure, privacy, transgression, and healing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKravis draws on sources that range from ancient funerary monuments to furniture history to early photography, as well as histories of medicine, fashion, and interior decoration, and he deploys an astonishing array of images--of paintings, monuments, sculpture, photographs, illustrations, New Yorker cartoons, and advertisements. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKravis deftly shows that, despite the ambivalence of today's psychoanalysts--some of whom regard it as \"infantilizing\"--the couch continues to be the emblem of a narrative of self-discovery. Recumbent speech represents the affirmation in the presence of another of having a mind of one's own.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Nathan Kravis\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0262036614\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780262036610\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e MIT Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 09\/01\/2017\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 224\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.70lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.20h x 7.00w x 0.90d","brand":"Nathan Kravis","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":43946371907839,"sku":"9780262036610","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/products\/img_5a92d361-c7f5-4062-8691-71a0bbaaef47.jpg?v=1681512770","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/on-the-couch-nathan-kravis-9780262036610","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}