Conversations with Clinicians: On The Parts Left Out: A Novel

Thomas Ogden, having published eleven books on psychoanalysis and internationally acclaimed as a highly respected contributor to this field, published his first novel, The Parts Left Out, in 2014. The following is the transcript of a conversation about his thoughts on writing this book and on writing in general, recorded on April 17, 2014.

Maureen Kurpinsky: Let me start by saying how much I enjoyed reading The Parts Left Out. I found it compelling from beginning to end, and afterwards. I understand this was your first novel. I wonder how you came to write a novel and whether you had previously written any fiction, short stories perhaps?

Thomas Ogden: It feels as if I have been an apprentice to fiction for 40 years in writing analytic papers. While it is rarely put so bluntly, analytic papers are fictions, at least the clinical parts. The clinical examples are inventions — things that an analyst dreams up to try to convey something that feels true to the experience with a patient. Virtually no analyst records sessions — if an analyst did so, it wouldn't be an analytic session — so whether it's an hour, a day, or several years after the session has taken place, the dialogue that we read in an analytic paper is fictional, even though we try to pretend it isn't. So, it's in that sense that I've done a long apprenticeship to writing fiction.