Professor Alessandra Lemma

(2023) first principles

“Alessandra Lemma's deeply reasoned and erudite advocacy for ethical self-discipline on the part of psychoanalysts eschews both stodgy moralizing and formulaic guidelines. Instead, she recommends the cultivation and sustenance of psychic space for truth, fairness, and respect for the patient's essential Otherness. Lemma's approach is characterized by a gentle iconoclasm that challenges us to leave the comfort of normative narratives, societal or psychoanalytic, while listening to our patients. Her oeuvre is wide-ranging, writing style elegant, and arguments convincing. The result is a book of rare literary luminosity, theoretical soundness, and clinical significance.”

- Salman Akhtar, MD
Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College
Training and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia

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"This remarkable book manages to be sophisticated, deeply thoughtful, expressive, lively and practical at the same time. It offers an approach to ethics focused especially on psychoanalysis but applicable to all forms of psychotherapy and elsewhere too. Few authors have absorbed the challenge of the philosophy of ethics so completely and demonstrated so brilliantly not only that it is a vital element in regulating psychoanalysis but also that it has the capacity to guide and strengthen psychotherapeutic training and practice for the benefit of therapists and patients alike.”

- Professor Stephen Frosh 
Department of Psychosocial Studies Birkbeck, University of London and author of Those Who Come After:Postmemory, Acknowledgement and Forgiveness. 

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"The most important skill in life is how to think ethically. Alessandra Lemma teaches this skill to psychotherapists. To engage in rational ethical deliberation in a mind propelled by unconscious impulses is the human challenge. Stunning and original, wise and empathic. A classic in practical ethics."

- Professor Julian Savulescu 
Chen Su Lan Centennial Professor in Medical Ethics; Director, Centre for Biomedical Ethics, National University of Singapore and Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, Co-Director Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, University of Oxford 

(2021) Transgender Identities

'The clinical and ethical reflections contained in this book, the outcome of over ten years of clinical work with transgender individuals, invite us to think about the body and its unconscious identifications. One of Alessandra Lemma’s fundamental premises is that the understanding of the internal world of transgender individuals casts light on the subjective experience of embodiment. Psychoanalysis, in the words of Winnicott, does not "…take for granted the lodgment of the psyche in the body": it sees it, instead, as "…an achievement". In this profound book Alessandra Lemma underlines the relevance of the heterogeneity of pathways to the understanding of transgender as it encompasses a range of lived experiences. This deeply sensitive book, which also displays examples of her clinical work, will be a valuable resource for all those interested in exploring this complex area.'
Rosine Perelberg, President of the British Psychoanalytical Society, author of Sexuality, Excess and Representation and editor of Psychic Bisexuality

'There could not be a more appropriate, indeed urgently needed, time for a serious, empathic consideration of transgender identity. As cultural norms are dramatically shifting and identity politics are often highly polarized, it is both an act of courage and clinical sophistication for Professor Lemma to ask simply and directly how individuals find a "hospitable home" in their bodies. From that simple but profound question comes a call for a respectfully challenging consideration of how we can clinically do better for those individuals with transgender identity and at the same time, encourage a more tolerant, accepting society for all. This is a book clinicians working with adolescents and young adults in our contemporary culture cannot afford to pass by for it necessarily challenges day to day practice around transgender identity.'
Professor Linda Mayes, Arnold Gesell Professor, Yale Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine

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(2017) The Digital Age on the Couch: Psychoanalytic Practice and New Media.

"Whenever one reads Alessandra Lemma one can always expect to be confronted with original and unexpected viewpoints. She is both a classical and post-modern psychoanalyst who, with clinical acumen and theoretical rigor, never abandons the mainstream of psychoanalysis. Professor Lemma explores contemporary questions with the depth and breadth of direct clinical experience. This latest offering examines psychoanalysis in times of techno-culture - an essential read for all clinicians as we grapple with this new reality, which is not only in the everday lives of all of us, but is also very present in our clinical practices."

Vincenzo Bonaminio, Adjunct Professor, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Sapienza, University of Rome, Training and Supervising Analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society and of the IPA, Director, "Winnicott Centre" of Rome.

"Alessandra Lemma has a way of identifying and capturing the core of modern culture. We cannot understand our patients, the people around us or indeed ourselves without understanding better how we have individually and socially adapted to the digital world. This is the essential journey that Lemma takes us on, in an inspiring, beautifully written and moving voyage of exploration. This book is an essential guide for every clinician working with every patient."

Peter Fonagy, Professor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Developmental Science, UCL.

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(2015) Introduction to the Practice of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. Second Edition (Chichester: Wiley).

The 2nd Edition of Introduction to the Practice of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, the highly successful practice-oriented handbook designed to demystify psychoanalytic psychotherapy, is updated and revised to reflect the latest developments in the field.

"This is so much more than an introductory text; it holds fast to an open, reflective and critical stance, setting out psychoanalytic ideas and their practical application in a way that is remarkably clear,
authoritative and demystifying. The revision extends and updates the original, making psychoanalytic concepts even more accessible and – more importantly – applicable. This book deserves a wide audience, and I strongly recommend it."

Tony Roth, Professor of Clinical Psychology, University College London

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(2015) Sexualities: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspectives. London: Routledge.

"In this remarkable new collection of essays, Alessandra Lemma and Paul E. Lynch have provided us with an up-to-the-minute compendium of current psychoanalytic thinking regarding sexualities. Desire, developmental pathways of gender and sexual orientation, prostitution, perversion, sexual excitement, intimacy, and many other themes are considered from various perspectives that are unfailingly enlightening. Psychoanalysis has struggled with this entire area because of our fear of looking at what is in front of our eyes. This extraordinary book helps us see what we may prefer to avoid in ourselves and in others. It deserves a place on the bookshelf of every psychoanalytically-oriented clinician and will surely be used as a textbook for courses in psychoanalytic institutes.

Glen O. Gabbard, MD. - Training and Supervising Analyst at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies in Houston.

This book sets a new standard. Contributors portray extraordinary empathy for and rich clinical documentation of the wide range of psychic and behavioral usages of sexuality and gender. They candidly acknowledge wrestling, like Freud, with old feelings -- discomfort with some current culturally-contested formulations while being at the forefront of contestation. Several chapters provide an original, creative integration of abstract theories about maternal sexuality with research on attachment, mirroring and mentalization and on-the-ground observations of infantile sexuality. I was grateful for recognition of Stoller's contribution and for necessary, and too rare, discussions of the relations between sociology, sexology and psychoanalysis.

Nancy J Chodorow, PhD. Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

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(2014) Minding the Body: the body in psychoanalysis and beyond, London: Routledge.

‘Lemma has become one of the modern leaders in psychoanalysis. Her contribution to understanding this most fundamental of psychoanalytic concerns – our relationship to our bodies – has been immense and is growing. This book is an essential source of inspiration for clinicians to help them listen to and hear their patients’ deepest concerns more clearly. An extraordinary achievement.’

Peter Fonagy, Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis and Head of the Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, UK

‘In this insightful and innovative book Alessandra Lemma revisits and explores further some of the subjects she considered in Under the Skin…. The author is at her fluent best as she examines how we ascribe meaning to experience through our bodies, and attempts to illustrate how the analyst can help patients re-integrate mind and body… This is an innovative approach to a fascinating subject. I defy any book browser to peruse its tantalising chapter titles and not want to read the whole book. Minding the Body is a must read.’  

Antonino Ferro, President of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society and Consultant Associate Editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. He is a training and supervising analyst in the Italian Psychoanalytic Society, the American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytical Association. 

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