Academic Research

My academic research uses interdisciplinary resources to examine big questions at the heart of social and psychological life, such as: what conditions enable personal and political transformation? why do some relationships maintain extraordinary power in our lives? what facilitates authentic forms of selfhood and relationality?

 

In my first book, Homo Psyche, I sought to examine the underlying theoretical assumptions of contemporary Queer Theory in order to demonstrate that obtaining a truly radical position with respect to sexuality requires rigorous metapsychological foundations. I undertook a comprehensive critique of existing theoretical norms - focusing on work by Eve Sedgwick, Leo Bersani, Lee Edelman, Judith Butler, Lauren Berlant and Jane Gallop.

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My second book on psychoanalytic theory, Exigent Psychoanalysis, addresses major debates in the clinical field in order to find out what constrains psychoanalysis from developing into a bolder and more innovative and discipline. I work with Affect Theory and contemporary neurobiology, and introduce and explicate the theoretical contributions of the French philosopher-psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche in order to call for "new foundations for psychoanalysis."

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My next project will look at the relationship between critical theory (from Nietzsche to Zizek) and psychoanalysis, with the particular aim of elucidating the ways that approaches to social-ethical questions are often built on the repudiation of erotic-relational life. I am most interested in how the neglect of psychological complexity has shaped so much philosophical work, what this reveals about the difficulty of thinking in genuinely psychological terms, and what interventions might remedy this situation.