On the Way Home: Conversations Between Writers and Psychoanalysts

On the Way Home is a selection of four unscripted public conversations between writers and psychoanalysts from the many that took place at the Institute of Psychoanalysis, together with a short introduction by the editor. The dialogues bring together authors whose work stimulates thinking about the unconscious mind; analysts with a professional and passionate interest in the unconscious and a wish to learn from writers; and a wide audience of people interested in literature and psychoanalysis who later join in the discussion from the floor.

Some of the authors were already interested in psychoanalytic ideas, others had almost no familiarity with the subject and even some skepticism. All the dialogues explore the compelling human need to make sense, or to evade knowledge, by telling stories. Each conversation is different, depending on the live chemistry between the discussants, though all four give us the sense that we are witness to an ongoing discussion.

The interest is in a non-specialist exploration of the writing, in the process of writing, in engaging with literature as a reader, and in areas of commonality and difference between psychoanalysis and literature.