Impossible Return – Psychoanalytic Reflections on Breast Cancer Loss and Mourning

<p><i>The Impossible Return – Psychoanalytic Reflections on Breast Cancer Loss and Mourning</i> is a work of creative nonfiction and autotheory. It is part cancer memoir part psychoanalytic theorizing and part history of late Soviet Ukraine.</p><p>Anna Fishzon’s personal narrative is interspersed with interludes exploring other “reconstructions” (Chernobyl’s sarcophagus the perestroika years) as well as psychoanalytic reflections on anxiety prosthesis hypochondria and tattooing. The authorial voice is intentionally polyphonic: elegiac humorous at times academic and philosophical. Each chapter is set in the context of the writing process with discussion of the Covid-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine. The prologue examines the psychoanalyst’s bodily presence in treatment and includes clinical vignettes that discuss the impact of remote therapy sessions during lockdown and an epilogue provides a meditation on repetition compulsion and the impossibility of mourning fully.</p><p>Through theoretical and personal reflections on mourning and recovery after catastrophic collapses of psyche body and place this book makes original contributions to psychoanalysis Slavic and cultural studies trauma studies film criticism and history. This unique work will be relevant to readers interested in psychoanalytic studies cancer and disability studies and critical theory and academics of autotheory and memoir.</p>