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NCP is pleased to host a wine & cheese reception and roundtable discussion with the authors and artists featured in Cancer and Creativity: A psychoanalytic guide to therapeutic transformation, edited by Esther Dreifuss-Kattan, PhD, ATR-CB.

Invited authors and artists include Howard Bass, Christine Carey, Esther Dreifuss-Kattan, Emory Elyson, Suzanne Isken, Corinne Lightweaver, Ashely Myers -Turner, Teresa O' Rouke, Adam Pomerantz, Zizi and Devon Raymond, Chaya Spalter, Loene Trubkin, and Mary E. Walter.

Cancer and Creativity is a dialogue between accounts by cancer patients and survivors and a more clinical consideration and theoretical discussion from a psychoanalytic point of view of using creativity in coping with serious illness. Ten artist-patients and survivors, who were involved in several long-term art therapy groups, give accounts of their experiences with cancer and with their support group, where they create paintings, embroidery, digital photography, comic books, maps and other works to express their experiences of being diagnosed and treated for cancer.

The book also addresses the experience of the public when they are confronted with art by cancer patients. Dreifuss-Kattan's own work as a psychoanalyst and art therapist informs her approach to the art space as what Winnicott calls a "transitional space," influenced by both the personal psychological experience and the physical environment. The book ends with a practical guide for both therapy groups, as well as individuals at home, to creatively address their experiences with cancer and its treatments.

Cancer and Creativity will be of great interest to psychoanalytic psychotherapists, psychooncologists and art therapists, as well as health professionals working in oncology and in palliative care.

"Cancer and Creativity is an outstanding book that combines patients’ experiences as displayed through art with an editor and clinician who has worked with patients with cancer at UCLA for many years. She blends her skills, training, and experience to bring together a "must read" for any individual coping with cancer or any clinician who works with individuals who have cancer. Actually it is a fascinating book for any reader!" -Lonnie Zeltzer, MD, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

"Cancer and Creativity offers the reader coherent ways of coping – even mastering – the overwhelming traumata associated with a cancer diagnosis. Dr. Dreifuss-Kattan explains and convincingly demonstrates how and why art making can heal the psychological damage connected with cancer. Using a wide range of art materials and artistic projects, the authors provide eloquent examples of how a reader could learn to work effectively with patients who might otherwise seem beyond reach. This book is a gift to all clinicians working with cancer patients." -Laurie Wilson, PhD, ATR, New York University

"The psychoanalyst and artist Dr. Dreifuss-Kattan enables cancer patients to find a new psychic integration through creative work in view of their life-threatening illness. She lets us readers participate in her touching accompaniment of her patients' journey into the unconscious - to the boundaries between life and death. An innovative, very readable book." -Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, PhD, Vicechair of the Research Board of the International Psychoanalytical Association and former director of the Sigmund-Freud-Institute, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Esther Dreifuss-Kattan, PhD, ATR-CB, president of the New Center for Psychoanalysis from 2016-2018, is a senior faculty member and a member of the Archival and Program Committees. Her previous book with Routledge was Art and Mourning: The role of creativity in healing trauma and loss (2016).