PUBLICATIONS
monographs
Laubender’s fiercely argued book rewrites everything we knew about the politicality of the psychoanalytic clinic. Seething with ironies and illuminations—there is no clinical gesture (defenses, reparation, secure attachment) that is not embedded in its Cold War and decolonial histories, its geopolitical imaginaries. It’s where psychoanalysis must struggle to go.
Matt ffytche, coeditor of Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism
Revisiting previous historical experiments, Laubender gives us a searing perspective on our much-troubled present. Generous, deft reinterpretations of classic cases by legendary British psychoanalysts—including an ingenious take on Winnicott resituated in Windrush-era racial conflict—are framed by a brilliantly incisive assessment of the perilous politics currently roiling the wider therapeutic scene. Dagmar Herzog, author of Cold War Freud and The Question of Unworthy Life
Laubender’s intervention into the clinical turn shows how political theories emerge in psychoanalytic praxis through the transferential and counter-transferential relation. Reading analysts in their clinics, she sheds light on the politics and situatedness of psychoanalysis, as well as its class, race, and national specificity. Ranjana Khanna, author of Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism
edited special issues
“Trans-Analytics: Psychoanalysis, Gender, History,” Psychoanalysis and History, forthcoming 2026
“Psychoanalysis and Aesthetics,” editor with Valerie Giovanini, Free Associations, Vol 75 (2019)
Peer Reviewed Articles
“Getting into Character: On Psychoanalysis & Literature in the Classroom,” Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, Vol 27.2 (2022)
“Empires of Mind: Postcolonial Cartographies of ‘The Empire’ in Narrative of a Child Analysis.” Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, Vol 26.3 (2021): 323-344
“Speak for Your Self: Psychoanalysis, Autotheory, and the Plural Self.” Arizona Quarterly, Vol 76.1 (2020): 39-64
“Empty Space: Creativity, Femininity, Reparation, Justice.” Free Associations, Vol 75 (2019): 27-48
“Introduction: Aesthetic Subjects.” with Valerie Giovanini, Free Associations, Vol 75 (2019): 1-8
“Beyond Repair: Interpretation, Reparation, and Melanie Klein’s Clinical Play Technique.” Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Vol 20.1 (2019): 51-67
“On Good Authority: Anna Freud and the Politics of Child Analysis.” Psychoanalysis and History, Vol 19.3 (2017): 297-322
“The Eye of the Beholder: Sexual Difference, Scientific Narrative, and the Female Gaze in Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud.” Harts & Minds: The Journal of Humanities and Arts, Vol 3.1 (2016): 1-16
Public Scholarship
“Here, There, and Everywhere—Now,” The Psychologist, July 18, 2024
“Beyond Repair: The Psychic Life of Reparation,” The Columbia University Press Blog, June 12, 2024.
“From the Bomb to Apollo 13: John Bowlby, Child Psychology, and The Cold War,” The Psychologist, June 10, 2019
“States of Security: John Bowlby, Child Psychology, and The Cold War,” Hidden Persuaders Blog, April 1, 2019
Book Reviews
“Review: Fanon, Education, Action: Child as Method by Erica Burman.” European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling, Vol 22.3-4 (2020): 291-294
“Review: D.W. Winnicott and Political Theory edited by Matthew Bowker and Amy Buzby.” Psychoanalysis and History, Vol 20.1 (2018): 120-124
“Review: The Biopolitics of Gender by Jemima Repo.” Feminist Theory, Vol 18.2 (2017): 232-34
“Gut Response: A Review of Elizabeth A. Wilson’s Gut Feminism.” Journal of International Women’s Studies, Vol 17.1 (2016): 131-35