The Architecture of Psychoanalysis: Spaces of Transition by Jane Rendell (London & New York:  I.B. Tauris, 2017;  308 pp.)

The Architecture of Psychoanalysis purposefully challenges what is expected, what we expect a book to look like, how we expect it to be organized and what we expect it to be about. It presents us with three narratives: a personal account, a narrative on psychoanalysis and a narrative on modern architecture. But before dwelling on the book's content, a few words are necessary on the author's approach to writing, which might surprise the conventional reader.

The book makes use of the spatial writing method, which Rendell used previously in two other titles, also published by I.B. Tauris: Art and Architecture and Site-Writing . The Architecture of Psychoanalysis intertwines three different narratives, which are presented visually in different ways. One, presented horizontally on the page, is a personal account of the book's content, giving a very brief and descriptive impression of a specific space, accompanied by pictures. A second narrative reviews basic psychoanalytical concepts (the lost object; the transitional object; the setting and afterwardsness [Nachträglichkeit]). The first of these dwells on the relation between memory and trauma; the ‘transitional object’ addresses debates around the theory of object relations, the unconscious relationship between the subject and his or her objects, both internal and external (drawing on Freud, Klein, Guattari, Lacan and Winnicott); the third section reflects on the ‘setting’, making use of Freud, Winnicott and André Green; lastly, the section on ‘afterwardsness’ explores the relation between the unconscious, memory and repression, and in particular Laplanche's connection of psychoanalysis to mourning (Freud and Green are again addressed). This narrative features text (left aligned) on the right-hand page and a picture or drawing on the left-hand page. Finally, we have a narrative which presents a selection of architectural projects, intended to highlight community relations, presenting text (left aligned) on the left-hand