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Psychoanalysts have a long history of interest in and writing about various sociocultural phenomena - among them, literature, visual arts, film and music. Until recently, though, applications of a psychoanalytic lens to sports have been relatively scant. This compendium of essays, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Intense Involvement in Sports
edited by Hirsch, Blumberg, and Watson, reflects more recent interest in thinking psychoanalytically about athletes and sports fans (e.g. Reynoso, 2021; Rubinstein, 2017). The editors organize the book in three sections, essentially: psychoanalytic reflections on various sports-related topics, perspectives on fandom in particular, and clinical applications. Eight of the twelve chapters are reprinted from a 2010 issue of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, but readers familiar with the original articles who are interested in clinical applications will welcome this edition for the final section, in which three of four chapters are new and also vital.
The authors of two of the five chapters in the first section consider baseball from a psychoanalytic perspective. Although baseball is likely to be less familiar to, and thus possibly of less inherent interest to, some international readers, the authors explicate specific terms and historical context parenthetically or in end notes to make their explorations more accessible. The provocative title of Adrienne Harris’ chapter - “Baseball’s Bisexuality” - understates what she accomplishes in her ambitious, lyrical essay rooted in her own experiences in which her baseball fandom was associated with both (a) special connections with her father and later her husband, and (b) a sense of herself as a woman as an “envious outsider, wanting in” (26) traditionally male-dominated discourse about the sport. Harris not only integrates psychoanalytic ideas with those from feminism and postmodern gender theory, but also links them to crucial sociocultural-political critiques of sport and the rich American