“Alfred Lorenzer is one of the best-known German psychoanalysts. With the dyadic “scene” and the “form of interaction”, he introduced new relational concepts into psychoanalysis. His in-depth hermeneutical method bridges the gap between cultural and psychoanalytic theory, allowing the unconscious sensual-symbolic forms of interaction of cultural phenomena and the socially oppressed schemas of life represented therein to be uncovered. Now, with this book, his landmark essay on the method of a critical-hermeneutical cultural analysis is available in English for the first time. International authors provide in their own contributions new insights into his innovative theory.”

- Werner Bohleber, PhD, psychoanalyst, former editor-in-chief of the German psychoanalytic journal “Psyche”

“This riveting volume puts generative pressure on the metapsychological divide that keeps contemporary psychoanalysis stalled, precisely because it has pitted the body against culture, and the drives against the social. Via the lens of Alfred Lorenzer, whose work appears here systematically for the first time in the Anglophone world, Cultural Analysis Now! shows us that we can have our cake and eat it too! Cumulatively, the essays collected here not only make a convincing argument for the inextricability of drivenness and sociality; they also demonstrate how the two can be worked together. With fresh thinking that maps onto the BLM movement, explores applied psychoanalysis, tracks adolescent development, and takes up hermeneutics, this is a book that can open us up to new conversations.”

- Avgi Saketopoulou, New York University Postdoctoral Program

“This book introduces North American, English speaking readers to a profoundly interdisciplinary thinker – Alfred Lorenzer – who positions psychoanalysis between the body and the social, between neuropsychology and sociology. An exciting and important new voice enters and expands the dialogue between relational and egopsychological perspectives with implications for the clinic and for applied analytic ventures.”

- Adrienne Harris, New York University Postdoctoral Program

“I’ve needed this crystal translation of Lorenzer’s psycho-social thinking for the last thirty years, using psychoanalysis to build a psycho-social, transdisciplinary methodology. Lorenzer shows and tells how this can be done, using psychoanalytic methodology (never individualising) and placing scenic understanding at the core. The editorial introduction, brimming with insights, helps access to the text and four disparate essays show how relevant to contemporary thinking Lorenzer’s astonishing ideas continue to be.”

- Wendy Hollway, PhD, Co-founder of the British Psychosocial Studies Network and the European Psycho-societal Research Group